Cassandra 2012 Headline Animator

Thursday 15 March 2012

Animal Rights or Human Rights?


In a previous post I deplored the suggestion that a bank, via PayPal, was seeking to censor e-books. I am pleased to be able to report that that threat appears tohave been averted thanks to the campaign that was mounted by concerned organisations and individuals who would have been directly affected by the proposal.

This is an example of a successful campaign by a minority to prevent a change in custom and practice with the potential to affect us all. There are other recent examples that are less welcome. The most recent concerns the use of mice in medical research. Having several years ago harassed breeders in the UK to the point where they gave up, animal rights activists, it is now reported, have succeeded in preventing the importation of the animals into Britain.

This is a disturbing development not just because of the potential impact on the research but because it demonstrates that a small minority working quietly and virtually unnoticed have the power to prevent not one but several large organisations from carrying on a legitimate business. That is very worrying indeed if you believe in democracy. The people concerned claim that they have mounted their campaign out of concern for the animals. On the other side of the argument are the people whose lives might be saved or whose suffering might be relieved by the drugs that need to be tested on the animals.

I am tempted to ask: do these people ever swat a fly? Do they take steps to prevent the birds that enter their garden from eating slugs, snails and worms? Where do they draw the line between creatures that are to be protected and those that can be left to fend for themselves in face of predators? The mice they are protecting would not exist were they not bred for the intended purpose. Their cousins in the wild lead a far more hazardous life. The purported concern that has led this handful of individuals to take the law into their own hands in defiance of the majority population is totally misguided. It is time for the rest of us to stand up to these ignorant fools and insist that the airlines and ferry companies ignore them and their threats.

There is a second recent example of a minority group seeking to interfere with the democratic process. Leaders of the Roman Catholic Church have become quite vociferous in their condemnation of government proposals to introduce a form of marriage for gay people. When I see these men in frocks pontificating from the pulpit I am apt to start shouting at the TV screen, telling them to mind their own business!
I have no problem with the Church making rules for its members. But it has no right to seek to impose those rules on the rest of us.

Saturday 3 March 2012

Why does a bank want to censor my reading?


The most widely used means of paying for goods and services on-line internationally is operated by an organisation called PayPal. It partners Smashwords, the on-line digital publishing platform and facilitates transactions between the publisher and readers. Now it has informed Smashwords that it will end that partnership if Smashwords continues to publish certain kinds of material.

Not long ago I expressed my own concerns about some of the content in the Smashwords catalogue, saying that I was not entirely happy to have my book listed alongside such material. After I posted a link to my blog post (which I have since removed) on Smashwords' Facebook page a commenter pointed out that there is a filter on the publisher's site that enables customers to exclude adult material from searches. All very well, but I have classified my book as "adult" because it contains a few passages that are, in my opinion, unsuitable for children. Anyone viewing the Smashwords catalogue with material categorised as adult filtered out will therefore be unable to discover my book.

But there is a world of difference between providing a means for individuals to exclude from view material which they regard as inappropriate and an outright ban on the publication of such material. And it is certainly way beyond the remit of a bank, real or virtual, to dictate the reading habits of its customers.

PayPal is, apparently, claiming that one or more credit card companies are imposing this requirement on them. In other words, it is a real bank that is at the root of the problem. It is bad enough that here in Europe our governments are having their economic policies determined by the banks. At least matters financial are a legitimate concern for banks. Your reading habits and mine are not.

I have heard feminists argue against pornography on the grounds that it exploits women and in many instances of film and video this is undoubtedly the case, often involving the trading of young and immature women and girls across international borders. But in the case of the written word no-one is hurt. There may be graphic descriptions of people being subjected to depraved acts against their will but it is all in the imagination of the author and his or her readers. And the thing that surprised me in Mark Coker's e-mail this morning is this: "Women write a lot of the erotica, and they're also the primary consumers of erotica." So it is they rather than men who will be most harmed by this move.

I have repeated above the claim attributed by Mark Coker to PayPal to the effect that one or more credit card companies are behind this. I can only suppose that, having thus far failed to get SOPA through the US legislature, the religious right in the so called "land of the free" is now attempting censorship through our wallets. Whoever is at the root of this challenge to freedom of speech must be stopped and stopped soon. So I am appealing to all who read this blog to write to your bank and tell them that you will not tolerate this interference in your private and perfectly legal business transactions.

The following links were provided by Mark Coker in his e-mail of 2nd March PST/ 3rd March GMT. Follow them to find contact details for the CEO of each organisation. Let's flood their mail systems with our protests.


Mark also said "Don't scream at them.  Ask them to work on your behalf to protect you [and your readers] from censorship." The square brackets are mine. The words between them apply only if you are a writer.

There is more information about this assault on our liberty at the Electronic Frontier Foundation's website.