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Post by BlueAndGold on Jun 8, 2020 20:05:36 GMT
All the more reasons to keep it simple. Just print the books. Simple. You don't have to get any of that goo on you. Just print the books.
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Post by ronmiller on Jun 8, 2020 21:20:53 GMT
We have no responsibility. We were only following orders.
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Post by ronmiller on Jun 8, 2020 21:33:10 GMT
I completely agree with your previous post, but in this post, you show one of the problems: Lulu giving a free ISBN and as the publisher, should follow North Carolinan's law - the same book published with the author's ISBN should follow the law of the place where the author=publisher is resident. So Lulu's support is not only suposed to speak 155 languages, but also to know several laws of several countries... If e.g. a Swiss publisher publishes through Lulu and the book is printed for European customers in Poland, the UK or the Netherlands, the application of US law would be more than presumptuous.
Or e.g. the National Socialist texts are banned in Germany as hate texts - except for scientific purposes. So I create a few footnotes and write "study edition" on the title page. Is that enough? I believe that the longer this discussion becomes, the less clear the situation and the more questions there are. Although I can see from the written text that so far all participants in the discussion seem to have a similar basic attitude.
What a wasp's nest was stung in there! I mean, even without an announcement, Lulu could refuse or cancel a publishing or printing job if necessary.
In North Carolina where Lulu Press is based age restricted relationships where the "underage" can consent are 13 to 15, and unrestricted starts at age 16. The age of majority in North Carolina is 18.
In Delaware where Lulu Press is incorporated the age restricted relationships are 16 and 17, with unrestricted beginning at age 18.
A hornet's nest in the U.S. not to mention global markets.
I think that one should simply use some common sense. If you feel that you have a book that might cause some ripples if published through Lulu...or perhaps you think that Lulu might balk at being associated with your book...then find another outlet for it. There are publishers out there---print and electronic---catering to every possible, and sometimes even barely conceivable, market. Besides, it is pretty obvious that Amazon has no apparent restrictions on the books it carries...so if your book can be published as a Kindle ebook, you can evidently write about anything you like, from bestiality to incest. |
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Post by Retread-Retired-Cameron on Jun 8, 2020 21:40:34 GMT
We have no responsibility. We were only following orders.
****** Edit ******
That defense was rejected as far back at 1474 CE.
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Post by BlueAndGold on Jun 8, 2020 23:46:34 GMT
It's not like they are pillaging a continent and burning Jews and dissidents.
It is simply putting ink on paper, guys.
Keep it simple.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 9, 2020 0:05:01 GMT
It's not like they are pillaging a continent and burning Jews and dissidents. It is simply putting ink on paper, guys. Keep it simple. This is right out of 1984. Truly creepy. Like burning books. The beginning and the end of free speech, thought, life. |
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Post by ronmiller on Jun 9, 2020 11:31:46 GMT
It's not like they are pillaging a continent and burning Jews and dissidents. It is simply putting ink on paper, guys. Keep it simple. This is right out of 1984. Truly creepy. Like burning books. The beginning and the end of free speech, thought, life. I kind of think that one POD company contemplating screening the books they print and distribute marks "the end of free speech, thought, life" or is equivalent to "burning books." Lulu is not remotely the only way to get a book into print (actually or virtually). Oh...and meanwhile Google and Internet Archive are making (occasionally illegally, sad to say) hundreds of thousands of books available in electronic form with virtually no regard to subject matter. It took three seconds to find multiple copies of "The Negro a Beast" on Internet Archive. And a search just for the word "erotica" alone resulted in more than 2000 titles. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 9, 2020 14:43:46 GMT
This is right out of 1984. Truly creepy. Like burning books. The beginning and the end of free speech, thought, life. I kind of think that one POD company contemplating screening the books they print and distribute marks "the end of free speech, thought, life" or is equivalent to "burning books." Lulu is not remotely the only way to get a book into print (actually or virtually). Oh...and meanwhile Google and Internet Archive are making (occasionally illegally, sad to say) hundreds of thousands of books available in electronic form with virtually no regard to subject matter. It took three seconds to find multiple copies of "The Negro a Beast" on Internet Archive. And a search just for the word "erotica" alone resulted in more than 2000 titles. Everything starts small. One action leads to another. I believe during the Holocaust they did not take away all the Jews' rights right away. Slowly slowly they starting restricting. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 9, 2020 15:03:27 GMT
Books must never be burned or censored or restricted. The is the first collapse of free speech, free humanity, free thought. The Nazi book burnings were a campaign conducted by the German Student Union (the "DSt") to ceremonially burn books in Nazi Germany and Austria in the 1930s. The books targeted for burning were those viewed as being subversive or as representing ideologies opposed to Nazism.
...
Such barbarity was just the beginning, however. One can see in retrospect how the book burnings and other steps to remove “Jewish influence” from German institutions foreshadowed much more catastrophic Nazi plans for the Jews of Europe. Eerily, among the books consigned to the flames in 1933 were the works of the nineteenth century Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, who in 1822 penned the prophetic words, “Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too.”
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Post by Retread-Retired-Cameron on Jun 9, 2020 16:17:33 GMT
This is right out of 1984. Truly creepy. Like burning books. The beginning and the end of free speech, thought, life. I kind of think that one POD company contemplating screening the books they print and distribute marks "the end of free speech, thought, life" or is equivalent to "burning books." Lulu is not remotely the only way to get a book into print (actually or virtually). Oh...and meanwhile Google and Internet Archive are making (occasionally illegally, sad to say) hundreds of thousands of books available in electronic form with virtually no regard to subject matter. It took three seconds to find multiple copies of "The Negro a Beast" on Internet Archive. And a search just for the word "erotica" alone resulted in more than 2000 titles. Ron,
Sometimes in the U.S. it's not so much about common sense as it it about how "fixing" some issues are approached. Back in the 1920s and 30s my grandfathers [among others] were saying: "Common sense ain't so common anymore".
Yes, today there are various venues for printing work that may or may not be problematic but that doesn't mean there always will be. Effecting change regarding what is seen as an issue can can have unforeseen repercussions, i.e.: see Law of Unintended Consequences. Prohibition was a Progressive initiative meant to "perfect" society, and it did anything but. Send me a PM and I'll give you some other examples.
For now, time to do some research for a story.
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Post by ronmiller on Jun 9, 2020 18:04:24 GMT
I kind of think that one POD company contemplating screening the books they print and distribute marks "the end of free speech, thought, life" or is equivalent to "burning books." Lulu is not remotely the only way to get a book into print (actually or virtually). Oh...and meanwhile Google and Internet Archive are making (occasionally illegally, sad to say) hundreds of thousands of books available in electronic form with virtually no regard to subject matter. It took three seconds to find multiple copies of "The Negro a Beast" on Internet Archive. And a search just for the word "erotica" alone resulted in more than 2000 titles. Everything starts small. One action leads to another. I believe during the Holocaust they did not take away all the Jews' rights right away. Slowly slowly they starting restricting. In the case of Nazi Germany "they" were the government. In this case we are talking about the actions of one private company. Amazon, on the other hand, apparently has no filters at all. There is absolutely not even a hint that the government (in the US at any rate) has any interest in monitoring the some 12,000 publishers in this country. Sure, Lulu is aggravating but, as I have pointed out, it is far from the only game in town. It's just been really, really easy to use (until recently anyway), especially since it combined printing with distribution, so everyone has gotten used to it. But there are countless ways to get a book into print and in front of the public if one really wants to. Adding to the suggestions I made earlier, there is nothing stopping authors from forming a publishing coop (of which there are already several). And there is Small Press Distribution, which exists to provide distribution for small publishers. "All the Ugly and Wonderful Things" was published by a mainstream traditional publisher with apparently no interference from anyone. On the fringier edge of that spectrum, there are countless publishers of erotica, from soft to the hardest core, almost all of which have their books available as print and ebooks from Amazon. Even the most loathsome and hateful of racist books---such as "The Turner Diaries"---have a home on Amazon. And even in the worst case scenario, all anyone needs is a means of reproducing words on paper. (Get enough people together and maybe an Espresso book machine could be purchased. And there is always plain old offset printing: a press can cost less than a tenth of an Espresso machine.) During WWII, Nazi-occupied populations began to create and publish their own uncensored newspapers, books and political pamphlets. Indeed, the underground press played a crucial role in informing and motivating resistance across the continent and building solidarity. Underground media allowed for information sharing among the oppressed, helping them build solidarity, strengthen morale and, in some cases, stage uprisings. In 1933, Arno Herzberg wrote “The new circumstances in which German Jewry now finds itself have also heralded a new era for the Jewish press." |
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Post by ronmiller on Jun 9, 2020 18:08:23 GMT
I kind of think that one POD company contemplating screening the books they print and distribute marks "the end of free speech, thought, life" or is equivalent to "burning books." Lulu is not remotely the only way to get a book into print (actually or virtually). Oh...and meanwhile Google and Internet Archive are making (occasionally illegally, sad to say) hundreds of thousands of books available in electronic form with virtually no regard to subject matter. It took three seconds to find multiple copies of "The Negro a Beast" on Internet Archive. And a search just for the word "erotica" alone resulted in more than 2000 titles. Ron,
Sometimes in the U.S. it's not so much about common sense as it it about how "fixing" some issues are approached. Back in the 1920s and 30s my grandfathers [among others] were saying: "Common sense ain't so common anymore".
Yes, today there are various venues for printing work that may or may not be problematic but that doesn't mean there always will be. Effecting change regarding what is seen as an issue can can have unforeseen repercussions, i.e.: see Law of Unintended Consequences. Prohibition was a Progressive initiative meant to "perfect" society, and it did anything but. Send me a PM and I'll give you some other examples.
For now, time to do some research for a story.
Indeed! But Prohibition was an act of the government, not individual companies. And it required a constitutional amendment at that. To nullify the First Amendment to the Constitution, number one of the Bill of Rights, would not be a very easy thing to do. I think that extrapolating the kind of filtering Lulu wants to do to the entire nation is a little excessively imaginative. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 9, 2020 18:17:58 GMT
Everything starts small. One action leads to another. I believe during the Holocaust they did not take away all the Jews' rights right away. Slowly slowly they starting restricting. In the case of Nazi Germany "they" were the government. In this case we are talking about the actions of one private company. Amazon, on the other hand, apparently has no filters at all. There is absolutely not even a hint that the government (in the US at any rate) has any interest in monitoring the some 12,000 publishers in this country. Sure, Lulu is aggravating but, as I have pointed out, it is far from the only game in town. It's just been really, really easy to use (until recently anyway), especially since it combined printing with distribution, so everyone has gotten used to it. But there are countless ways to get a book into print and in front of the public if one really wants to. Adding to the suggestions I made earlier, there is nothing stopping authors from forming a publishing coop (of which there are already several). And there is Small Press Distribution, which exists to provide distribution for small publishers. "All the Ugly and Wonderful Things" was published by a mainstream traditional publisher with apparently no interference from anyone. On the fringier edge of that spectrum, there are countless publishers of erotica, from soft to the hardest core, almost all of which have their books available as print and ebooks from Amazon. Even the most loathsome and hateful of racist books---such as "The Turner Diaries"---have a home on Amazon. And even in the worst case scenario, all anyone needs is a means of reproducing words on paper. (Get enough people together and maybe an Espresso book machine could be purchased. And there is always plain old offset printing: a press can cost less than a tenth of an Espresso machine.) During WWII, Nazi-occupied populations began to create and publish their own uncensored newspapers, books and political pamphlets. Indeed, the underground press played a crucial role in informing and motivating resistance across the continent and building solidarity. Underground media allowed for information sharing among the oppressed, helping them build solidarity, strengthen morale and, in some cases, stage uprisings. In 1933, Arno Herzberg wrote “The new circumstances in which German Jewry now finds itself have also heralded a new era for the Jewish press." Even one company does this and survives others will follow. It sets a precedent.
I hear what you are saying about other means of publishing, but the reason Lulu was so successful and Amazon and others emulated it is because it is much easier a path to publishing. All the others you are listing are long and difficult. Easy publishing and printing, no cost up front, is a good thing and should be accessible to all.
Anyway, we disagree. That is all.
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Post by Retread-Retired-Cameron on Jun 9, 2020 20:53:03 GMT
Ron,
Sometimes in the U.S. it's not so much about common sense as it it about how "fixing" some issues are approached. Back in the 1920s and 30s my grandfathers [among others] were saying: "Common sense ain't so common anymore".
Yes, today there are various venues for printing work that may or may not be problematic but that doesn't mean there always will be. Effecting change regarding what is seen as an issue can can have unforeseen repercussions, i.e.: see Law of Unintended Consequences. Prohibition was a Progressive initiative meant to "perfect" society, and it did anything but. Send me a PM and I'll give you some other examples.
For now, time to do some research for a story.
Indeed! But Prohibition was an act of the government, not individual companies. And it required a constitutional amendment at that. To nullify the First Amendment to the Constitution, number one of the Bill of Rights, would not be a very easy thing to do. I think that extrapolating the kind of filtering Lulu wants to do to the entire nation is a little excessively imaginative. I'm sorry, I must have forgotten Prohibition was enacted in the space of a few minutes rather than having people working for decades in order to elect the politicians who would enact the legislation that would force everyone to live under their moral imperative.
It's not like there are people in the U.S. today who would dearly love to force everyone to live by their moral standard. so yes I must be excessively imaginative.
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Post by And still Kevin 2024 on Jul 1, 2020 2:27:30 GMT
It used to be said that people vote with their feet, meaning if they decide they don't like an establishment they move on. (Myspace still have 100,000,000 users per month, BTW. Even Bebo still exists, but not as a social networking site. It shut down as such when it was disclosed that most users seem to be Groomers! Just after AOL paid 30+ mill for it! The chap who set it up and sold it to AOL bought it back for 5 mill of that 30 mill!) Perhaps people are now 'voting' by using Tik Toc and even Zoom. There's also Alibaba spreading across the world (mainly listing manufacturers just now though) but it could become a serious competitor to Amazon, it's already almost as big, in Asia. Facebook boast they have billions of users, but not really they don't. They may have billions who subscribed, but many of them did nothing once subscribed. Millions of pages have not been updated for years! They moved on. But Facebook have to insist they have billions of actual users because it keeps the cost of advertising on it up. But with all the bad press Facebook get, how long can they last before the rest move on? Many now use Twitter and the likes. Far easier to use on a smartphone!
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