I’ve been thinking hard about this topic for about 24 hours. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night. I realized that my decision is going to affect more than just me, but, to paraphrase Edmund Burke, evil triumphs when good men do nothing.
I have decided to take all Amazon links to my books down from my site and refuse payments or make purchases via Paypal. I have also emailed my publishers:
Dear Aaron and Emma,
I thought long and hard about this decision before I came to it.
I have taken down all the links to the Kindle versions of my e-books at Amazon on my site. I know that I’m not much of a money maker for you, and I guess it won’t make a difference, but I have decided, for ethical reasons concerning Amazon’s decision to stop offering hosting services to Wikileaks, that I cannot promote them. I cannot purchase from them and I would prefer not to have my books sold on their site.
I know you are a business, and I know Amazon plays a huge part in the publishing world. I know that for the books I have already published, and that are hosted in Kindle format on Amazon, you are perfectly within your rights to sell them there. But I would like it if, should I publish any future material with you, that you do not offer a kindle edition of my work.
Sadly, this goes for paypal too. I am attempting to set up an account with Moneybookers to receive payments, but if I can’t do that, just keep any monies owing to me and perhaps just send a check once a year.
Hugs, and I’m sorry for any trouble caused, or lack of sales. But I have very strong feelings about this, ethically.
A number of companies in the US decided to heed Sen. Joe Lieberman and refuse service to Wikileaks. Paypal, Amazon, Tableau and EveryDNS… I’m sure there are others.
Personally, I think Julian Assange is a creepy little prick. And I’m actually slightly ambivalent about the whole ethics of Wikileaks. However, this organization has not been charged and convicted in a court of law. Companies like Amazon, Paypal, Tableau and EveryDNS caved in to McCarthy style bullying. Perhaps Tableau and EveryDNS don’t have lawyers on staff who could advise them of their legal position, but Amazon and Paypal do. Any competent lawyer would have informed them that Wikileaks has not been found legally guilty of anything yet, and until it IS convicted, those companies were breaking no laws by continuing to offer the organization their services. Moreover, it is the height of hypocrisy for Amazon to continue hosting the online version of The Guardian Newspaper, which also posts and hosts Wikileaks material, while kicking Wikileaks themselves off their servers.
As reported in the Washington Post, in its article “Why prosecuting WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange won’t be easy“, there IS no general law making the disclosure of information a crime. Certainly, as it stands at the moment, Sen. Lieberman has no right to be bullying or threatening companies that offer them services. And those companies have an ethical obligation to stand up to it.
Why?
Because it was the internet with all its free flow of information that made Amazon, Paypal, Tableau and EveryDNS what they are. And by caving in the way they have, they are killing the very landscape they have thrived and profited on.
As I said, I’m not a wholehearted supporter of Wikileaks. I have questions about whether some of the information they have leaked will put soldiers lives at risk. But I also ask myself why does an entity like Wikileaks thrive? Why do people come to them and give them the data? Why do so many people feel it is better to have the information out in the open?
I was born the year before JFK was assassinated. I grew up with Watergate and the Nixon impeachment. I am a grandchild of the Edward R. Murrow and a child of the Daniel Ellsberg generation. In my lifetime I have seen an institution, the press, fall from being the Fourth Estate – an essential element in ensuring that power is not abused in a democracy, to the crap it has become now. I have watched the rise of the Fox News Network with its hideous cartoon version of news, and the fall of BBC into an organization whose views are so obviously and patently left-leaning that there are certain subjects it simply cannot report on without outrageous bias.
Now I’m watching huge internet companies (who have become so integral to my online life that cutting them out of it is proving to be not only inconvenient, but financially damaging to me) behave like McCarthyist sheep.
It’s going to hurt me to cut them out of my life. And being as insignificant as I am to them, my absence isn’t going to make a difference. I know that, ultimately, my act will mean nothing. But after I’m finished re-linking everything, and arranging for alternative methods of payment, I think I’m going to sleep better.
Obviously, I can’t ask you to join me. Many of you are writers who depend on Amazon and Paypal for your living. But I do hope, really hope, I have made you think a little.
(only an hour after posting this, the very smart and super-generous Ian @EbowGB informed me that there is a handy little application that will convert epub and mobi e-book formats, along with many others, into something Kindles can read. Calibre – and it’s absolutely free.)
What I like about this post is its balance.
The bullying nature of the US government’s reaction is both sinister and appalling but this does not excuse the indiscriminate nature of the disclosures by the egregious Assange and his organization. It seems to me that both parties have some similar failings, amongst which are an inability to appreciate what constitutes reasonable behaviour and fair play and a depressing tendency to abuse their positions, because they can.
Some differences between them exist. Governments are, at least in theory, answerable to their electorate and act in ways that they believe to be effective in order to achieve ends that they believe to be necessary for the good of all. They clearly get this wrong some of the time, sometimes with grave consequences for many people. Assange and his cohorts, however, act with carefree abandon, plainly without feeling constrained by any of the responsibility that they say is lacking in their targets.
What sticks in my craw about Assange and his mob is their hypocritically self-righteous and irresponsible attitude: they are behaving like joy-riders, enjoying their moment but careless of the potential negative effects of their actions for everyone else.
One might also mention all the fine speeches by Obama and H Clinton when they took up office about open government and freedom of information. Not to mention their pious words about Chinese attempts to censor the internet. Who are the true hypocrites here?
However, I can’t help adding as a footnote that I find your view of the BBC truly bizarre. It’s not a description I recognise. And being based in London I probably see a lot more of their coverage than you do.
Otherwise, I applaud your stand.
I still find the BBC the most reliable of news sources for most things, but I find their coverage of anything on the Israeli / Palestinian strongly skewed. Their framing tends towards a markedly anti-Israeli stance. And although I myself tend to be strongly critical of most Israeli government responses to the Palestinian problem, I still find the BBC biased in its coverage.
One of the things I love most about reading your blog is how everything you write seems so honest; whether it be fiction, erotica, politics or just fun ideas, you always write openly and without pretense. I really do agree with what you say above about our news networks; obviously, living in the UK, the BBC dominate news coverage (insofar as TV news is concerned anyway, and actually it feels the same on the web), but I was wondering, where do you choose to get your news? I mostly listen to BBC Radio 4 in the mornings as, although I don’t always agree with their views, they do ask quite probing questions quite insistently, and it works for me (50% of the time). I also used to read The Independent, but I haven’t in a while. For longer term news I sometimes read Time magazine.. but still. What do you read/listen to/watch?
LGS xx
I really only get two television news channels here: BBC world and CNN international. But I tend to get on the internet for anything I want to know about in depth. I read the New York Times site, the Guardian Online and the Washington Post. Once in a blue moon, I treat myself to a hardcopy of the Herald Tribune – which arrives here two days late and sometimes redacted. I still find that often Time Magazine and the Atlantic Monthly are good.
I admit that my news consumption habits tend to reflect my left-leaning orientation, but I’m not unaware of my own bias, and therefore I recognize it when I see it in the material I consume.
Historical fact Nixon wasn’t impeached he resigned William Jefferson Clinton Blythe was impeached not convicted. The same as Andrew Johnston. The problem I find about all this brew ha ha about leaked documents is that there have fed/gov document leaks for eons and no one has been convicted of releasing classified documents. Now selling them is a different item cause that is spying and there have been very few proven cases of that, but when they are they are Lulu’s from Arnold to the Walkers.
I subscribe to the theory that wikileaks is doing BHO’s bidding to take down Hillary Rodham Clinton. The most embarrassing leaks are the cables from state and who runs state HRC.
If BHO was really worried about the leaks after the first one Wikileaks would have disappeared and would have never been heard from again. Instead what is the Fed/Gov’s response TSA and feeling up little boys and girls at the Airport.
Just some passing thoughts about the way it is.
There’s a real difference of perception of the Israeli-Palestinian problem as between Europe and North America, I think. To us in Europe, it’s the unquestioning support of Israel by the US, both government and media, which is a mystery. I guess we’ll just have to agree to differ on that.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks that!
Principled
Gifted
Selfless
Fearless
~ Bravo RG ~
… there are politicians the world over who could take a leaf or two from your book … imagine; a world with elected representatives acting in the genuine interests of both their constituents and the wellbeing of mankind … it seems that diplomacy really is just lies, secrets and tactless commentary – primary school bullying in the global playground?
Dear RG, couldn’t agree more in all aspects of your post. As to the BBC you are spot on. The lean to the left has happened over so many years and even decades that possibly to people exposed every day it may not be perceptible.
Keep up your good work and find another way for your followers to get money to you!
Yes!! Good for you, Madame!
Honestly, I opened your site, saw the header and “Bad Joe” and read. Send me a note and I will pay you however you wish–even though I may not care for your stuff. This is worth it.
My original attempt at ire was to a business site not set up for comments, so it was lost.
P.I.
For what it is worth. I have written to my own publishers with the same request, before finding this post this evening.
I think what will prove of greater importance than the man himself, at the end of this storm in the internet teacup, is the ripple effect wikileaks has begun to catalyze across mindsets and demographics. There are several important lessons to be learned about the integrity of an independent practice and what goes missing in the deluge of economic monoliths. What artists tend to forget, and writers, especially, is there are always alternatives to how one earns a living. The giants like to believe they have the single recourse and mostly the world of consumers and those so eager to fulfill their publishing dream, believe and follow blindly.
There is much at stake here potentially and it is not just about access or income. And as for the BBC, I think were Hogarth alive today, we would see a mighty roar in the press of all the moral satire he would have made into a feast of parody, were he not fired before he got his first print to press.. or kindled!
Kindle the spirit of independent thinking RG.. it’s the only kindling that counts these days.
Chapeau.
M