

Why I banned a book: How censorship can impact a learning community - jparishy
http://crln.acrl.org/content/74/7/368.full

======
tlb
Book banning used to be scary when printed books were the only way of
conveying long-form information to the public. Now authors can release the
contents on the internet, which isn't perfect (less pleasant to read, no
royalties) but good enough to protect freedom of speech.

After hundreds of years of the tyranny of book burners, technology has routed
around the problem.

~~~
Wingman4l7
In locales where access to higher technology is limited, I imagine that book
banning could still be quite effective.

~~~
mahmud
In the Middle East, forbidden literature is best distributed digitally. It's
far easier to conceal, transmit, and even produce. There are some Arabic book
clubs online that have more materials than most physical libraries. Two great
examples are the atheist and Marxist communities. Neither could have thrived
so much without the internet.

------
iamthepieman
This reminds me of what many popular websites did during the SOPA and PIPA
discussion. Though most sites simply displayed some mock warning or
announcement stating "This is what you could see if SOPA was passed".

Instead of or in addition to fighting NSA surveillance operations and requests
I wonder if sites could instead display a message or page detailing what the
NSA would be provided with if they ever came asking for your information.

records maintained on your account: search: "Funny pictures of cats" IP:
192.168.0.1 account: johndoe5555@provider.com date: 01/01/2013 12:00:00.000
referrer: www.example.com

etc . . .

~~~
rdw
That's a clever idea, but I think that most users would be disconcerted by the
sheer amount of information that's collected by most web sites already. It
would raise the question, "why do you need to collect all that?" before
anything else. Which is a good question to be sure, but probably not the one
that most companies want to be answering.

~~~
iamthepieman
You're probably right about the web site getting the wrong kind of attention
from this. I can almost see a government organization doing this instead,
either as a public service or after some open information law is passed in
reaction to public opinion on NSA surveillance.

The U.S. government might just be bureaucratic and fractured enough.

------
wac
>...on a campus of 3,000, only eight people actually asked for a meeting with
me to discuss the reasons I banned the book

I think this is really the most interesting part of the story- people are
willing to complain but not take reasonable actions to remedy the situation. I
think this is a symptom of a deeper problem in our society.

~~~
sbhere
YES! +1k.

> Some used Facebook as a forum to make rude comments from the relatively safe
> distance social media provides. This is the sole purpose of facebook, as far
> as I can tell. Give a loudmouth a microphone and then try to ignore them as
> they shout as loudly as possible.

... and I reference the "Facebook experiment" article a while back:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5811564](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5811564)

------
ballard
And the favorite lists and references to Godwin's law ensue:

    
    
      * Steal This Book
      * Anarchist Cookbook
      * Uncle Tom's Cabin
      * Mein Kampf
      * Das Kapital
      * The Satanic Verses
      * Captain Underpants (for the kids, obviously)
    
    

Feel free to criticize or bust out some better titles. :)

~~~
eksith
The AC wasn't really a "book" per-se, but a collected volume of snippets,
wasn't it? I'd hardly call that a "banned" book though. I mean, it contained
illegal activities which would have been verboten in most places.

When I was in high school, there were kids who would frequent online forums
(and a myriad of ad-heavy free hosts including GEOCITIES!!!!) that would put
up The AC, using the library computers.

They used Websense to filter content, which was about as effective as a sieve
since they hadn't contemplated open proxies. 10 - 20 New ones which would pop
up from time to time and the IPs would get traded on those forums.

From the copies that got passed around on floppies (aaah, floppies. Remember
those?) I'd say The AC was a collection of (mostly bad) texts assembled from
various authors who posted these on Usenet and the like previously. I remember
there were multiple versions; nothing really "official" since many were edited
and compiled by independent authors and all are guaranteed to get you in
hospital or jail.

I think a couple of idiots in our school accomplished both.

~~~
unimpressive
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_cookbook](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_cookbook)

No, it was a book, published in hard copy. And it's probably older than you
are.

The best story I've read on the Internet about the Anarchist cookbook was a
guy who claimed that he accidentally blew up his middle school with home made
dynamite in Ireland, and only got away with it because the government blamed
it on the IRA. (I can't seem to find it right now though.)

The fastest way to falsify that story is if the recipe for dynamite in the
Anarchist cookbook is wrong. (Which it may very well be, as the book is full
of wrong information IIRC.)

~~~
Tuna-Fish
I googled for it and found a "anarchist cookbook v2000". It contains recipes
for dynamite and nitroglycerin that are correct, but stupendously dangerous to
do.

------
dietlbomb
Librarian activists use the word 'ban' differently than everyone else. To most
people, to ban something is to prohibit it. To librarians, to ban a book is to
keep it out of stock. This may still be morally wrong in some situations, but
it is dishonest of these activists to conflate such an action with book
burnings and other more radical forms of information suppression.

------
6ren
The modern way to ban books is steganography-like: hide them in a sea of
information.

~~~
readme
Imagine this: services like amazon take over all the dead-tree book market.
The government cracks down on piracy, and eliminates that way of getting
books. A few big players end up controlling all the books on drm'd electronic
devices.

The future could be an easy place to ban books.

~~~
unimpressive
"The hardcore flying saucer cultist, on the other hand, is a very special
personality who has thus far escaped close scrutiny by the scientific
community. Contrary to Buckner's finding, a poll of 250 hardcore "ufologists"
in the United States in 1969 determined their median age to be 31. Teen-agers
and house-wives constitute the most active groups, collecting clippings of
sightings and issuing amateur newsletters and magazines, usually mimeographed.
The classic search for identity plays an important role. The teen-aged
ufologist is most often isolated on a farm, or separated from his peers
because of his eccentric personality." _The Flying Saucer Subculture_ , John
Keel (1973)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimeograph](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimeograph)

I'd always wondered how you produced a zine before personal computers.

------
johndavidback
Scary still and somewhat related is: instead of banning books, just change the
content to fit your needs. Like Nineteen eighty-four.

Oh, and like this: [http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-
entertainment/books/news/t...](http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-
entertainment/books/news/twains-classic-loses-the-nword-for-modern-
age-2177172.html)

------
fnordfnordfnord
Is there something about this post that got it killed automatically, or did I
just get banned or something?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6069755](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6069755)

edit: Oooh, I'm guessing the reference to H a ckaday?

------
danso
> _Our unorthodox (okay, heretical) experiment was very successful in
> highlighting how a simple bureaucratic decision can curb our freedom to
> read._

Huh? Isn't the lesson more like, "People react very badly when a bureaucracy
tells them what they _cannot_ do"?

Or, as Oscar Wilde put it: "There is only one thing in life worse than being
talked about, and that is not being talked about."...or, in the OP's case:
"Better to be censored than to be ignored"

Did anyone else in junior high/high school actively seek out the books on the
Banned books list just to see what the hell was so interesting about them?

\----

A more relevant experiment would be to just hide certain books for a year and
see if anyone notices. However, the percentage of a community that will read
any one book in a year is so small that you wouldn't be able to discern any
overall negative effect from hiding it.

~~~
hrktb
I guess the "very successful" part was really the 8 people trying to
understand the reason the book got banned, and the (few ?) other constructive
responses to the announcement.

Especially if the other years' banned book weeks got no measurable reaction at
all. People on facebook reacting shallowly to some announcement should not be
news.

~~~
derleth
> banned book weeks

The problem here is that it isn't 'banned' books, it's 'banned _and
challenged_ ' books, which means 'any book anyone has complained about', which
means Harry Potter qualifies.

You cannot tell me with a straight face that Harry Potter has been
meaningfully banned in the Western world.

It's a pious lie which reduces an important topic to a laundry list of things
the most extreme prigs got uptight over in the course of the past year or so.
It trivializes the whole issue.

~~~
protomyth
> You cannot tell me with a straight face that Harry Potter has been
> meaningfully banned in the Western world.

The only effect of a library banning Harry Potter was increased sales at the
local Wal-Mart.

------
hawkharris
This reminds me of a similar story about how creative messaging can make
people appreciate books and free speech:
[http://vimeo.com/35758683](http://vimeo.com/35758683)

------
mathattack
It's a great experiment. Sometimes you have to shake things up to keep the
importance of an issue alive. Of course things take a life of their own on the
internet and Facebook.

------
lsc
that's funny... it looked to me like one of the better promotions you could
have had for the banned book in question. In fact, the whole thing seemed,
well, like an unsubtle advertisement, unsubtle to the point where it became
less effective.

