Monday, February 20, 2012

Paypal Plays Morality Police

Paypal has decided to throw their weight around by playing morality police. They've begun to dictate what can and cannot be sold on websites that use Paypal to process their transactions.

This letter was recently sent out from Bookstrand, one of the leading ebook sites for romance and erotica.


Dear Publisher,

 We were informed by PayPal, without notice, and by our credit card processing company, that we are required to remove all titles at BookStrand.com with content containing incest, pseudo incest, rape, and bestiality, effective immediately. 

 We request that you immediately log into your account and unpublish all titles that contain the restricted content. If you have uploaded titles containing restricted content and do not unpublish these titles as we are requesting, we will deactivate your entire publisher account, which will remove all your titles from sale.

Who is Paypal to decide what other websites can or cannot sell? If Bookstrand decided that didn't want to sell those books, I wouldn't like it, but it'd be their right. But for Paypal to step in and force another company to comply with their morality is absurd. This is no different than your bank telling you that you're no longer allowed to purchase things they deem immoral.

What's next on their chopping block? Will menage books be banned? Will GLBT books be banned?

2 comments:

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  2. PayPal's been doing this for years. I would highly recommend switching to AlertPay, since they don't do morality-pressuring to my knowledge (and they're used by http://www.inkbunny.com, for instance).

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