Unpublished

[PennLady]

The only thing any of us are entitled to is our basic rights. And this is the beginning of those rights being taken away.

PayPal does not confer any rights to you, therefore they cannot take any away. PayPal is not saying these stories cannot be written, or published, or read. They are not saying these stories cannot be sold. PayPal is saying that their service cannot be used to purchase these things.

When you sign up with PayPal, you agree to abide by their rules. If you don't like them, don't sign up. I realize this makes some things difficult, but no one said anything is supposed to be easy.

You have the right to write your stories, but no publisher is obligated to publish it; no vendor is obligated to sell it; and PayPal is not obligated to help sell or purchase it.

Yes, PayPal is bullying Smashwords; I'll call it corporate censorship if you want. But they are not denying anyone any rights.

 

[mikey2much]

I thought that if you serve the public..

I listened to many of these same thoughts back in the sixties, but they were applied to intergration. "Its my cafe and I can serve who I want and refuse to serve who I won't." Were they right then?

As far as the censorship thing goes, it seems that everybody here agrees that business can do as it will and owes us nothing. Yet we think that the private sector should be trusted with our heath and our wealth. Shouldn't we be able to expect some safegaurds on our rights from these people who want the control of our lives?

I don't often agree with Lovecraft but in this case I think he is playing paul revere and shouting out a warning. While I am not smart enough no see an answer, I am smart enough to see the problem. Regardless of who is doing it we are facing censorship or if it makes you feel better, call it control of what we can buy to read.

 

[Stella_Omega]

The answer is that some brilliant financial engineering team creates a different method of payment that does not rely on the two giant credit card systems. It will need to allow anonymity the way paypal does, while being secure for the users. If it makes it more difficult to deny making a purchase somehow-- then paypal would gladly move to use it, I promise.

And there are groups out there trying.

Honest.

This is not, I repeat not-- about censorship, except that sexual pleasure is so suspect and deniable in this society, and that makes the facilitation of sexually motivated purchases risky.

 

[PennLady]

As far as the censorship thing goes, it seems that everybody here agrees that business can do as it will and owes us nothing. Yet we think that the private sector should be trusted with our heath and our wealth. Shouldn't we be able to expect some safegaurds on our rights from these people who want the control of our lives?

A business owes you the services or goods it says it will provide. No one said business owes us nothing -- if nothing else, people owe each other some basic courtesy, whether they run a business or whatever.

Tell me, seriously, what right is PayPal taking from you? since they didn't give you any, what can they take away? PayPal says they don't want their service to be used in certain transactions. PayPal is not preventing anyone from writing, or publishing, or buying or selling. You just cannot use PayPal to transact certain things.

I'd agree that PayPal is pressuring Smashwords to censor their stock, and that is a shame, and I wish they wouldn't. But PayPal is allowed to say "we don't want to do this" and then Smashwords can go along or not. What is really unfortunate is that Smashwords was so entwined with PayPal that they had no choice.

I don't often agree with Lovecraft but in this case I think he is playing paul revere and shouting out a warning. While I am not smart enough no see an answer, I am smart enough to see the problem. Regardless of who is doing it we are facing censorship or if it makes you feel better, call it control of what we can buy to read.

The answer is to find or create another payment system. Which is not easy, I realize, but then no one said the answer would be or had to be easy.

Unless PayPal is your only payment option, PayPal is not controlling what you can read. You can go anywhere else and use any other payment system if you want to find books on incest, or rape, or whatever.

As I've said before, you can write books on all of this stuff. But no one is obligated to sell it for you (nor is anyone obligated to buy it). If a publisher rejects you, is that censorship?

When the government says, "You can't write this," then you have censorship. What you have right now is one company pressuring another, and inconvenience to some people. That's not censorship.

 

[lovecraft68]

Just a bump here and not to go in more circles or to beat a dead horse (that would be both bestiality and possible necrophilia)

Wondering if anyone else who waited until the last minute to wipe their incest books saw a good weekend?

I sold 16 books between Saturday and Sunday all incest and they had all been up awhile so that burst was the best I'd had in awhile.

When people can;t find this on SW anymore Mark coker will see the money he is losing. If you have a particular kink and can;t find it, you don't go oh well I'll by this vanilla romance (as that is all that will be left soon enough) nope they ewalk away money still in pocket.

let's hope that is what happens here. I wish no ill will to Coker or Selena or the others but a huge blow to their pocket will spur them to find a solution.

End of the day money talks, but unlike us it is listened to.

 

[TxRad]

Just a bump here and not to go in more circles or to beat a dead horse (that would be both bestiality and possible necrophilia)

Wondering if anyone else who waited until the last minute to wipe their incest books saw a good weekend?

I sold 16 books between Saturday and Sunday all incest and they had all been up awhile so that burst was the best I'd had in awhile.

When people can;t find this on SW anymore Mark coker will see the money he is losing. If you have a particular kink and can;t find it, you don't go oh well I'll by this vanilla romance (as that is all that will be left soon enough) nope they ewalk away money still in pocket.

let's hope that is what happens here. I wish no ill will to Coker or Selena or the others but a huge blow to their pocket will spur them to find a solution.

End of the day money talks, but unlike us it is listened to.

Which part of this dead horse don't you understand.

It has nothing to do with Coker or SW or Selena not making money. It has to do with Paypal and the credit card companies not wanting to lose money. It is as simple as that and there is no substitute at the present time. Period.

SW/Coker built his site around Paypal to make things easier and faster. It's like your truck was built to run on diesel and now they don't make diesel. Gas won't work in your truck so you are screwed. End of story until some agreement can be made or another site built.

End of dead horse.

 

[lovecraft68]

Which part of this dead horse don't you understand.

It has nothing to do with Coker or SW or Selena not making money. It has to do with Paypal and the credit card companies not wanting to lose money. It is as simple as that and there is no substitute at the present time. Period.

SW/Coker built his site around Paypal to make things easier and faster. It's like your truck was built to run on diesel and now they don't make diesel. Gas won't work in your truck so you are screwed. End of story until some agreement can be made or another site built.

End of dead horse.

Only the end of the horse if the horse lies down and dies.

If all parties involve choose to swallow this and not look for an alternative they may as well fold now rather than suffer death by a thousand cuts when PP takes category after category away one at a time.

What I find interesting is their going after Excessia which never carried the "big three" of forbidden material.

By going further to include pseudo incest and some bdsm it's as if they were determined to cut into her and other sites as much as they could.

It seems like a dead ho4rse to those who don't sell erotica or if they do the money is negligible to them.

If you're trying to eek out a living or supplementing your income with this to help feed your kids then this is not a dead horse.

But human nature is to be selfish and only watch out for ones own ass. If it doesn't hit your home who cares right?

Apathy is the enemy, so go on not giving a shit, and talk to yourself in the oil fields and wait until something comes for you and everyone stands around and shrugs.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Until everyone learns to write like Henry James and disguise incest/underage sex within an ambiguous soup, you gotta play by the rules. Porn had a nice, long run and now the tide has changed.

 

[PennLady]

JWhen people can;t find this on SW anymore Mark coker will see the money he is losing. If you have a particular kink and can;t find it, you don't go oh well I'll by this vanilla romance (as that is all that will be left soon enough) nope they ewalk away money still in pocket.

Coker never said anything about losing money. Surely he will, in the absolute sense as he won't have those titles to sell. That doesn't mean these genres were the majority of his sales.

Tell me again -- what rights did PayPal give you, and which are they taking away? No one's answered that.

 

[TxRad]

Until everyone learns to write like Henry James and disguise incest/underage sex within an ambiguous soup, you gotta play by the rules. Porn had a nice, long run and now the tide has changed.

Nothing has changed. The market is still there and will keep growing which shows just how little you seem to know.

The way to pay for it on the internet is the problem.

I made almost 55k last year and sold nothing on the internet so PayPal will have no effect on me this year.

Figure that one out Jimmy.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Nothing has changed. The market is still there and will keep growing which shows just how little you seem to know.

The way to pay for it on the internet is the problem.

I made almost 55k last year and sold nothing on the internet so PayPal will have no effect on me this year.

Figure that one out Jimmy.

Concealing it from mom is the problem.

There's anuther aspect of the problem. Venues like Amazon have always allowed buyers to purchase goods, use them, and return them. WALMART is notorious for it. College students are the worst about buying reference books, using them, then demanding a refund.

 

[sr71plt]

There's anuther aspect of the problem. Venues like Amazon have always allowed buyers to purchase goods, use them, and return them. WALMART is notorious for it. College students are the worst about buying reference books, using them, then demanding a refund.

Well, yes, at the base of the problem is the baseness of the readers of this stuff who are ordering it, reading it, and then returning it for a refund. It's basically the type of reader who reads what's being targetted.

As as far as Lovecraft68's declaration that eXcessive never carried books in the "the big three," once again he is talking without knowing. eXcessica has sailed as close to the sun as it could get away with (what do you think the publishing house's title is meant to convey?) and it was caught early on and thrown out of Fictionwise until it purged itself of underage material. This isn't a new issue for this publishing house. Selena has had to rewrite her own books before this to get them reinstated here and there.

 

[mikey2much]

Well guys, if you are all content to let business get away with taking your rights, it is fine by me. I am over sixty five and retired, I've fought my fight and lost. But at least I fought.

Personally I feel that business should be held to certain standards of treatment for the public. But thats just me. America went through this back in the 1890's, with the railroads, banks, and steel industries, later joined by big oil. Back then America was blessed with those willing to fight for their rights and labor unions were formed and protective laws were passed.

Today, even on a politicaly correct porn site which is afraid to run anything that might even 'feel' like underage, everybody seems to think that all is well and that business can do what they want to us because we have no rights when it comes to business.

If we are following the republican drummers to their happy republican America, then business will run our schools, hosptials, prisons, and banks. I assume that you will all be content to live with no rights when it comes to dealing with them.

One thing that you won't be able to say is that you didn't know. You were told, you just didn't listen.

 

[lovecraft68]

Nicely stated and very true.

 

[PennLady]

Well guys, if you are all content to let business get away with taking your rights, it is fine by me. I am over sixty five and retired, I've fought my fight and lost. But at least I fought.

Tell me, b/c no one has so far, what right PayPal has taken from you. You are free to go to any place and spend your money -- cash, check, credit card, whatever -- on whatever is in the store. All PayPal has said is you cannot use their service to buy certain things. You can buy those things, or types of things, elsewhere. Why is this a problem?

Okay, it's a problem for Smashwords and others b/c they opted to go with PayPal as a sole payment method. But that's business. If Smashwords had another payment method, they could continue to publish/sell those titles and people could pay via the other method. Unfortunately, Smashwords is not set up that way.

Personally I feel that business should be held to certain standards of treatment for the public. But thats just me. America went through this back in the 1890's, with the railroads, banks, and steel industries, later joined by big oil. Back then America was blessed with those willing to fight for their rights and labor unions were formed and protective laws were passed.

Business should be held to standards, sure, and there are various laws about that. I know some of them have been weakened over the years.

However, businesses can still set their rules for doing business. PayPal has decided -- and I disagree -- that they want out of this particular part of that business. Why are they not allowed to do that?

Today, even on a politicaly correct porn site which is afraid to run anything that might even 'feel' like underage, everybody seems to think that all is well and that business can do what they want to us because we have no rights when it comes to business.

What if they didn't post underage just because they didn't like it? Is that any better? Lit allows stuff that other sites don't -- EroticStories.com doesn't allow incest, or violence. What does it matter? They are private businesses that have to consider a lot of things when they go into business and if they make decisions to reduce risk, so what? If I wanted, I could start a site where I only allowed romantic stories between married couples -- is that censorship?
No.

If we are following the republican drummers to their happy republican America, then business will run our schools, hosptials, prisons, and banks. I assume that you will all be content to live with no rights when it comes to dealing with them.

One thing that you won't be able to say is that you didn't know. You were told, you just didn't listen.

For the record, I'm registered independent, and even so, baffled by the idiocy that is the Republican field.

How come you aren't listening to me? Why haven't you answered the questions I've posed?

This is ONE company that is enacting ONE policy. They are allowed. They are not preventing you, the author, from writing or disseminating your work. You just can't use their service to do it.

 

[PennLady]

Nicely stated and very true.

Okay -- I'm asking directly. What right has PayPal taken from you in this? Name one.

 

[lovecraft68]

Saw an update on SW from Yesterday and went to a link where they are trashing SW for caving to censorship. Then that lead me to another link Etc...

It's funny that many here are saying this is business, but the word censorship is being screamed to the high heavens on all these sites. I guess all the people writing and responding to the articles are all uneducated idiots with feeling of "entitlement"

Including by the way Selena Kitt who is on there commenting and using the word censorship. Now whether it is or not is still debatable of course, but the correct strategy it to scream censorship because it attracts attention.

I feel bad for Coker that he is taking a beating here, but I think that many (myself included) felt he might be the one to find his way out of this, and not fold.

I don;t believe he folded because he has to cave for the moment. Part of this bullying campaign was that Paypal blindsided people with little warning and no time to find and put an alternative in place.

Where he is going to take heat is his statement of it being a "slippery slope and lets hope it slips no further" meaning he has no inclination to find a solution and will let paypal cut his balls off.

Another thing that occurred to me reading the articles is paypal is finger pointing at the CC companies that this is their policy etc....

Okay, has anyone heard anything on this from MC/Visa? This is going viral and I have not seen them back paypal up yet, so are they just letting PP take the role of censor here or is this all smoke on Pay pal's part?

Bottom line I am enjoying the hue and cry, this is what it will take. Authors taking all their works from SW and others and making them feel the crunch.

I feel bad for the guy, I really do, but I know that if he comes out a few weeks from now and says he has the alternative then people are going to flock back to him in droves and he will be getting boku press for taking the stand.

Time will tell, but I am becoming hopeful that this is not just going to go by without a fight.

 

[sr71plt]

What fight have you fought other than posting here Mikey--and not being able to accept what the real issue is?

 

[sr71plt]

Has anyone seen an effect on B&N yet--which uses Paypal as one of its payment choices?

 

[Stella_Omega]

Saw an update on SW from Yesterday and went to a link where they are trashing SW for caving to censorship. Then that lead me to another link Etc...

It's funny that many here are saying this is business, but the word censorship is being screamed to the high heavens on all these sites. I guess all the people writing and responding to the articles are all uneducated idiots with feeling of "entitlement"

yep, that's about the size of it.

 

[sr71plt]

Other uninformed people screaming on websites does not equal an informed person. The blind love to lead the blind.

The Internet is famous for this sort of nonsense.

Just like getting more and more people hyperventilating on a thread like this by continuing to trot down false paths isn't going to change the real issues--or solve perceived problems, either.

When you face that government isn't going to step in and protect your perceived entitlements against the rights of others and are able to define the business situation as it is, you can maybe start finding where the real world path is to either improving your position or coming to grips with why it can't be maintained/improved--at least for now.

 

[TxRad]

Has anyone seen an effect on B&N yet--which uses Paypal as one of its payment choices?

I believe B&N has a much stricter return policy on all books and material. If it ain't defective, you bought and no refund.

 

[sr71plt]

I believe B&N has a much stricter return policy on all books and material. If it ain't defective, you bought and no refund.

Interesting. Isn't Smashwords also a conduit into B&N? If so, the Smashwords gate may be enough for B&N.

 

[TxRad]

Interesting. Isn't Smashwords also a conduit into B&N? If so, the Smashwords gate may be enough for B&N.

Smashword's problem is one of software. They are stuck with PayPal and have no other options unless they want to rewrite the whole site. This is neither cheap or easy. Some people find this hard to grasp, I guess.

 

[mikey2much]

In all honesty, I do not even have a paypal account or credit cards. I don't use any local bank. I have my SS check desposited to a walmart money card each month. And, I am sorry to say, I have never sold anything that I have written, so I am truely just an observer.

Pilot, the fight I fought was when I quit the 82nd airborne in 67 when I only had six months left on my three year enlistment. Up until that moment I had enjoyed a very good service record, having seen combat in the Dominion republic and generally enjoyed the military life. But after seeing some of the shit that was going on down there, I decided that I couldn't support the nation's goals and actions anymore. Me and the army got into a pissing match that led to me breaking the record for solitary confinment at Fort Carson Colo. It is a long time ago now but I still hate the country for the way they treated me.

But that has nothing to do with this issue. Penn Lady, what if your local stores said that they didn't want to sell anything to you in your town. I guess it would be legal, I guess that if you wanted food or clothing you could drive to the next town. Would you feel that your rights had been abused?

I think that we as a people have to demand that business can't abuse our rights to use their services. When you serve the public, you have certain duties to fill. If I go into a cafe and order a grill cheese, I expect them to give me a sandwich with cheese melted between toast. If they say that they don't want to deal with the sort that would want grilled cheese because they don't like people like that, then my rights have been abused.

But in truth I don't have a dog in this fight. I am trying to write stories with no sex and will try my luck with amazon soon. I am not trying to change the underage policy here even though I feel that it chokes the ability to tell so many stories. You could fill a book with the good novels that would not be allowed to post here under their excessive rules against underage, but I am through trying to fight that battle. Its not my fight, I'm just trying to learn to write.

What drew me into this thread is the blind acceptance of the right of business to do as it pleases with no concern for how it takes away our rights.

If I seem extreme in my views, well my name should have tipped you off that I might have a problem with that. We fought hard to get the rules to protect ourselves from business and government. Now they refer to those as regulations and the cry from the right to de-regulate is the cry that they want to go back to the time when money was the only voice in the conversation when you talked about rights.