I Love Banned Books or Censorship = Bad

I take it that most people have heard of the amazon.com scandal by this point? The briefest summary I can give: certain books (primarily GLBT-related, though not limited strictly to that) have been removed from sales ratings and searches, and people are pissed. I can't sum it up much better than the following people have done, so here's some reading. (This is just as much for my own benefit, so I can keep track of the pieces I want to remember.)

I first found out about it through an entry at cleolinda's account. One of the comments I remember best is a response to the "it's a glitch in out system" claim that is along the lines of, "No. A glitch is when every book title starting with 'The' is removed, not this great variety of books."

While reading the LJ of ellen_kuskner I found another good article on Salon.

Through these ones you can find links to other articles; it's like a virtual collapse of dominoes. I've rarely ordered from amazon in the past (keep in mind, I do very little shopping on the internet) and now I certainly don't intend to in the future.

Remember: it's never too early to start planning for Banned Books Week!

I've heard that Lady Chatterly's Lover was de-ranked. Seriously? We need to get an ouija board and let Mr. Lawrence that his novel is still causing controversy.