March 2, 2012eBay Inc.2065 Hamilton AvenueSan Jose, California 95125PayPal USA2211 North First StreetSan Jose, CA 95131Attn: Scott Shipman,scott@ebay.com Jonathan Fox, jfox@ebay.com Jonathan Muller, jmuller@paypal.com Dear Sirs:On behalf of The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) and the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), we write to express concern over recent reportsthat PayPal is refusing to process sales of books and other written materials containing sometypes of sexual content. As organizations representing the interests of booksellers, publishers,authors, scholars, readers, and others who have a strong stake in a culture that values and promotes intellectual and artistic freedom and a free Internet, we urge you to revise this policy,which threatens to turn your company into a morality police.Published reports, as well as a flood of complaints filed with our organizations, indicate thatPayPal has notified a number of online booksellers and distributors, among themBookStrand.com, Smashwords, All Romance Ebooks, and eXcessica, that it will cease to do business with them unless they remove certain kinds of erotic content, including descriptions of rape, incest (and “pseudo-incest”) and bestiality.If PayPal’s concerns were limited to restricting the sale of illegal content, the policy would beunnecessary, since it already holds users “independently responsible for complying with allapplicable laws in all of your actions related to your use of PayPal's services, regardless of the purpose of the use.” However, the apparent purpose and clear effect of the policy is to prevent booksellers from distributing content that adults have a legal right to receive.Given PayPal’sdominant role in processing online transactions, the policy will have a dramatic effect on onlinesales of materials that do not even arguably qualify as obscene.
Search History:
Result 00 of 00
00 results for result for
p.
NCAC, ABFFE Letter To PayPal & eBay re: Ebook Refusal 2012
...we suggest that PayPal’s assumption of the role of moral arbiter is misguided and damaging to the company. If the company is concerned about appeasing those who believe some books should be banned entirely from the…
(More)
7.6K
Reads
4
Readcasts
5.1K
Embed Views
Get Scribd Mobile
To get Scribd mobile enter your number and we'll send you a link to the Scribd app for iPhone & Android.We've sent a link to the Scribd app. If you didn't receive it, try again.
We'll never share your phone number.
Recommended
More From This User
Notes
Load more
