Category Archives: Public Service

Amazon Appears to Censor Books Related to Homosexuality

by Editor | 2 Comments

In what appears to be one of the worst cases of literary censorship in modern United States history, Amazon.com has listed a wide range of books as what the company calls ‘adult material.’  It would appear that they have included any title that contains any material related in any way to homosexuality.  By being placed on this ‘adult material list’, the books were essentially stripped away from any search results and made very difficult to find by browsing.

The following is from Amazon:

In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

Candlelight Stories thinks that this represents one of the single most moronic statements ever delivered to the public by a prominent book seller.

The company has announced that this was due to a ‘technical glitch’ but there are very few bloggers who seem to believe that explanation.  It would seem that plenty of ‘adult material’ was left available and that this effort was focused largely on non-heterosexual material.   This is a terrible thing for a major bookseller to do.  It’s a form of book banning.  It reeks of ultra-conservative fear of ideas or differing lifestyles.   Amazon says it was engaged in an initiative to protect its wide customer base by listing certain books as ‘adult material’ so that they would not appear at the top of search results and possibly offend someone.   The complaints of someone who is offended by a book for adults showing up in a list of search results should not be listened to for even a moment.  It is a very short step from this kind of censorship to a book burning.  This is truly indicative of the danger in primarily relying upon a single online source for books.

It would be advisable to immediately move away from Amazon as a source for books.  This kind of behavior, though given a flimsy explanation by the company, tends to indicate a general direction or pattern of behavior in a company.  Candlelight Stories is looking into fully disengaging from our relationship with Amazon and will not be offering their products through our site.  This blog stands fully opposed to discrimination, censorship or book banning of any kind whatsoever.

Once again, we cannot over-emphasize the importance of moving away from Amazon for book purchases.  This is a very serious problem and the company’s explanation is insultingly false.

Here are links to several of the best book sellers on the internet:

Powells.com
Indiebound.org
Barnes & Noble
Borders

World Digital Library Set to Open or Fizzle?

by Editor

Set to open on April 21, 2009, the World Digital Library will make freely available in multilingual format, significant materials from different cultures, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, and others.  The library promises to promote cross-cultural understanding and provide resources to educators.  The Library of Congress is involved in the project along with the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the National Library of Brazil, the National Library and Archives of Egypt, and the National Library of Russia.

There are a couple of videos that claim to show prototypes of the library.  These look to me like quickly produced mock-ups of very little substance.  If you were really building such a library online, you would not have only four or five paragraphs of text and two videos on your web site to show for your efforts.  You’d be trying to show off how great your project is and how well it works.

I could be wrong, but this kind of mystery project that sits for years in ‘development’ and includes such enormous claims from such an international cast of characters always makes me suspicious.  I take an ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’ attitude.  Sort of the like the absolutely transparent $100 laptop con job otherwise known as One Laptop Per Child, which has received a Fiasco Award. 

After all, we already have The Internet Archive.  It actually works.  It has material from all over the world.  It’s free.  It’s easy to use.  Why don’t these great libraries just use that?

Authors Guild Attacks Reading Out Loud

by Editor

In what amounts to a shocking display of callous disregard for handicapped readers, The Authors Guild threatened to sue Amazon.com over its text-to-audio feature built into the Kindle 2.0 ebook reader.  It then negotiated with Amazon to allow authors to disable the feature for their books.

Apparently, the Guild and its member authors (who really need to have their names listed in public) have decided that the Kindle feature violates some mysterious copyright related to audio book rights.  So the logic they use seems to suggest that if I worked in my garage to invent an optical reader that would read my own books aloud to me as I passed it over the pages, I would be somehow violating an author’s copyright.  This is absurd.

The Reading Rights Coalition organized a protest in New York City a couple days ago to urge authors to allow everyone access to ebooks.

Read this amazing double-talk response to the protests from the Guild in which it pretends to have concern for handicapped readers.  They keep insisting that a device that reads a book out loud is an audio book.  No, dear Authors Guild, it is not.  It is a device that reads books out loud.  Like I do when I read to my wife.  What if a very life-like robot walked around reading a book to itself out loud.  Would that be an ‘audio book?’  Publishing companies are free to produce their own audio books and sell them and make contracts for them.  But they cannot tell people not to build machines that read.  Forget it.

The Authors Guild is mounting an attack on handicapped readers all over the world and should be made to look like the dinosaur it really is.  Which authors are a part of this assault on the blind?  Candlelight Stories wants the list.  We’ll happily publish it.  We’ll call the list, ‘Authors Who Don’t Want Blind People to Read.’

Public Service: Global Warming Information

by Editor | 5 Comments

What Do We Do Now?

It’s happening.

The earth is getting warmer.

The world’s scientists agree on it.

What does it mean?

What can we do?

When do we start?

It’s Happening
The majority of scientists worldwide agree that the earth is warming up and that human activities are making it worse. The United Nations recently released a report by a group of the world’s leading scientists and it paints a bleak picture of global warming. It states that we are in the midst of a worldwide crisis and that mankind must do something about it immediately or face certain disaster. It’s very simple. You either trust the scientists or you don’t. Candlelight Stories trusts the scientists. They have done the research and studied the evidence. Their data looks at a time period covering thousands of years and leads them to the conclusion that mankind is polluting the atmosphere so badly that the earth’s temperature is rising quickly.

Continue reading …

Public Service: Help the Food Banks

by Editor

Food Banks Need Help: Donate To One Near You

The economic recession has caused the loss of of millions of jobs over the past year. This means that many families across the country no longer have enough money to pay for their homes, medical costs, or their food.  There are ‘tent cities’ springing up in many parts of the country where people who have lost their homes go and try to make do with the bare necessities.  These people must have places to go for food.

Feeding America is the nation’s largest hunger-relief charity. They operate a network of 206 food banks. These food banks are very important in providing hunger relief for those who need it. They supply local soup kitchens and various programs that feed undernourished kids.

The food banks cannot keep up with increasing need as job losses get worse in every part of the country. You can help by donating to the food bank closest to you. When you contact the food bank they will tell you how you can help them serve the local community.