Amazon.com as Censor?

4 December 2010

Onnesha Roychoudhuri has an article in this month’s Boston Review on the power that Amazon and other large retailers wield over the publishing industry. Because a handful of large retail outlets (Amazon, Google, Border’s, Barnes and Noble, Walmart, and Target) sell a large proportion of the books in the United States, they have the potential to determine what books get read. And with Amazon leading the e-book market, its power is only growing. Amazon has not been shy about using this power, as Roychoudhuri, points out to essentially blackmail publishers into giving them bigger discounts and delisting books from publishers that do not give in to their demands.

And it’s not only books. Amazon also hosts web sites. It recently pulled the plug on the Wikileaks web pages that were hosted on Amazon’s servers.1 There are also indications that the firm removed gay and lesbian titles from its ranking schemes because of political pressure. (Amazon says it was a “glitch,” but never explained what happened.) Amazon’s history suggests that it is distinctly uninterested in freedom of information and puts its own profits above other concerns. Yes, companies like Amazon operate to make money and I don’t begrudge them that. But they also operate within a larger community and have responsibility for the communal welfare in addition to their responsibility to return a profit to shareholders. And in the long run, Amazon’s profits will be better served by a robust and vibrant information society than by one that is shuttered and channeled.

This is something to be very concerned about. Increasingly, the general public’s access to information is becoming funneled through a handful of media companies. We need to enforce a broader public sensibility that certain for-profit firms operate as something of a public trust, with responsibility for maintaining free flow of information.

Within the past few weeks, friends of mine have advocated that we demand Amazon remove a self-published e-book that advocated pedophilia from its “shelves” and that Apple remove an iTunes application from its store from an anti-gay political group.2 Now, the book on pedophilia appears to be a truly awful book, and I have no truck with Chuck Colson and his anti-gay group, but in both cases there is no evidence that either Amazon or Apple consciously decided to place these products in their store; people can automatically add their products to these stores provided they meet certain technical conditions. Should we really be trying to force Amazon and Apple to act as censors? But what happens when the political tables are turned. Amazon has deranked gay and lesbian titles in the past. Do we ask Amazon to delist Mein Kampf because it promotes antisemitism? What happens when Apple removes a MoveOn.org application from its iStore? There is a difference between protesting a corporation’s own political actions and protesting a corporation because it provides an media outlet that does not discriminate based on content, even if particular groups, even a vast majority, find that content objectionable.

Yes, companies have the right to not sell or provide outlets for material. It’s one thing for a store, small or large, with limited shelf space to limit the material it makes available or to focus on a particular market niche. But in the case of large media companies like Amazon and Apple, is this really a good idea? Isn’t it better to say they are a common carrier and all should have equal access to making their material available through these outlets? And when a bookstore grows so large that it can influence what books publishers actually produce, it takes on an obligation to carry all books, not just the ones that they get at deep discount.

1 The justification for the removal was that Wikileaks did not “own” the documents and there may have been concern that Amazon would be liable under espionage laws. But the decision in New York Times, Co. v. United States in the Pentagon Papers affair is pretty clear, unless the publisher plays a role in creating the leak the government can’t restrict publication of classified material. While the law is murky on whether Wikileaks as an organization is culpable under US espionage law, it is pretty clear that Amazon, in the role of ISP, is not. If the documents were copyrighted, Amazon would be obligated to pull them down, but US government documents cannot be copyrighted.

2 The iTunes application was free. Apple was making no money from it and had no stake in its success or failure. It was merely providing a media outlet like it does for all its application developers.

(Disclaimer: I am an Amazon Associate and make a modest amount of money (just enough to pay the operating costs of this site) through money generated by people clicking on links to books for sale at the store and through Google advertising.)

Legal Jargon: Same As It Ever Was

30 November 2010

As part of my learning medieval Latin, I’ve just started reading some legal depositions from thirteenth-century Venice. Now I’m used to Latin homiletics, hagiography, Biblical commentary, and poetry, but this was my first excursion into legal lingo. I was shocked at how modern it seemed. It could have come from a modern police blotter or out of the mouth of a police officer on the TV show Cops. Here’s an example from a deposition taken on 8 April 1290:

Florencius filius predicti Dominici, iuratus mandata domini potestatis et dicere veritatem et sacramento requisitus, dixit quod, die mercurii nunc elapso, ipse, cum uno alio qui vocatur Dainesius, laborabat audivit quemdam rumorem in curtivo dictarum dominarum; ad quem rumorem venit et vidit dictum Galvanum cum uno cultello a pane in manu euendo versus unam mulierem que est soror istius Florencii, ut dicit, et uxor ipsius Galvani. Quod cum videsset dictum Galvanum facientum insultum contra dictam suam sororem, ipse Florencius ivit versus dictum Galvanum et cepit ipsum, et ipse Galvanus ipsum Florencium et, sic tenendo se ad invicem, dictus Florencius percussit ipsum Galvanum cum pugno seu manu in faciem, taliter quod sanguis exivit. Interrogatus si aliqui alii precusserunt ipsum Galvanum, respondit non quod credat. De presentibus interrogatus, respondit quod plures fuerunt presentes, set non cognoscit eos. Aliud nescit.

Condempnatus in LX solidis et expensis curie. Solvit.

(Florencius, son of the aforementioned Dominicus, sworn as the mandates of the lord Podesta (civil magistrate) and to tell the truth and asked by oath, said that, on the Wednesday now passed, he, with one other named Dainesius, was working in the vineyard of the nuns of the aforesaid Saint Mary and, while they were working he heard certain shouting in the courtyard of the said nuns; he went to that shouting and he saw the aforesaid Galvanus with a bread knife in hand going toward a woman who is the sister of that Florencius, as he says, and the wife of that Galvanus. When he had seen the aforesaid Galvanus making an assault on his aforesaid sister, that Florencius went toward the aforesaid Galvanus and seized him, and that Galvanus seized that Florencius, thus holding each other, the aforesaid Florencius struck that Galvanus with his fist or hand in the face, such that blood discharged. Asked if some other struck that Galvanus, he responded that he believes not. Asked about the circumstances, he responded that many were present, but he did not know them. He knows nothing else.

Sentenced to sixty shillings and court expenses. He paid.)

I’m not the greatest at Latin, but this isn’t complex stuff, and it’s nearly a word-for-word translation. I haven’t massaged this at all to make it read like a modern deposition. Since our legal traditions are rooted in medieval Latin, it shouldn’t be a surprise that this legal mode of writing seems so normal to us some seven hundred years later. But I’ve never encountered anything this old that sounds so modern before.

(Edit: minor corrections to the translation)

New OED Interface

30 November 2010

The new OED online interface is up and running (sort of). My first impression is that I like it, a lot. But I’m having problems with speed (it’s crawling) and there are pages that refuse to load. I presume that this is due to unusually high traffic or other technical glitches that will be swiftly fixed. A more detailed review will be forthcoming.

The old interface will be available into 2011 to help ease the transition.

A Way With Words Podcast

30 November 2010

I usually don’t do this, but I’m going to ask for money. Not for me, but for the producers of the A Way With Words podcast. If you’re not familiar with it, you should be. Grant Barrett and Martha Barnette produce a weekly radio show and podcast on language that is fun, informative, and professional. It’s one of the highlights of my week. (I listen to quite a few podcasts—they’re great when commuting or walking the dog—and I can say that of all the shows I listen to, A Way With Words has, without a doubt, the highest production values.) The show used to be produced by a PBS radio station, but due to funding cuts at the stations is now an independent production, so they need to raise money just as if they were a public radio station.

So if you’re in a position to part with a few dollars, please click on the link to find out how. If you’re not, start listening to the show and then give it a review in iTunes or whatever podcasting service you use so that others can more easily find it. 

Spelling Reform Silliness

30 November 2010

Linguist Dennis Baron has a post on the OUP Blog on why efforts at spelling reform are just plain futile, and silly. I have mixed feelings about linking to this. While Dr. Baron is quite right, the efforts of organizations like the English Spelling Society don’t have a hope in hell of actually succeeding. They’re a bunch of harmless cranks. Spilling more ink on the subject of spelling reform just gives them legitimacy. Then again, Dennis’s tone is spot on. Derision is a good cure for cranks.