PayPal is now in Charge of Censorship?

 

I think it’s pretty pathetic when a company that only exists to process payments between buyers and sellers takes advantages of the fact that people use it so widely to begin deciding what people can and can’t buy. This is what PayPal is doing to ebook vendors such as Smashwords.

Books are things that allow people to express themselves freely, whether by writing them or reading them. Censorship has always been a problem for writers. When can we write what we need to write, without having some aspect of it censored, banned, or chopped out by sensitive editors?

Now, we also have to worry about whether or not PayPal will accept it. Will PayPal – not an editor or publisher or even a reader – let us write and sell what we enjoy writing? Will PayPal allow us, as readers, to buy the books that we enjoy to read?

What PayPal is objecting to are the following types of content in erotica: incest, rape, and bestiality.

Now, I don’t write any of these things, nor do I have any desire to read such things. But, the fact is, some people do. It’s not right to stop people from reading what they choose to read.

I may not want to read the things you want to read, but I will stand behind your right to read – and to read what you want. I’ve signed the petition, have you?