Selling your novels on Amazon is selling your novels in Treblinka...

[Maxinquaye]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-kaufman/google-books-and-kindles_b_380536.html

This is a deplorable article. I've been to Auschwitz. I've talked to survivors. I've traced my fingers across the tatoos on their wrinkled arms, arms that belonged to nine-ten-year olds in the 1940s.

The hi-tech campaign to relocate books to Google and replace books with Kindles is, in its essence, a deportation of the literary culture to a kind of easily monitored concentration camp of ideas, where every examination of a text leaves behind a trail, a record, so that curiosity is also tinged with a sense of disquieting fear that some day someone in authority will know that one had read a particular book or essay. This death of intellectual privacy was also a dream of the Nazis. And when I hear the term Kindle, I think not of imaginations fired but of crematoria lit.

I've seen those crematoria.

To compare that - and I don't hesitate to use the phrase - biblical evil with selling novels online is... deplorable. It makes me angry.

[Medievalist]

Yes.

This is an embodiment of Godwin's Law.

[Izz]

And i can't see any logic in what he's trying to say.

I think someone needs to buy him a tinfoil hat.

[sassandgroove]

people who say stuff like that don't have any connection to reality.

[William Haskins]

no doubt there's no small amount of paranoia and hyperbole at work here, but anyone who doesn't think that nations like china and iran aren't using digital footprints to extort, harass and punish people over simple access of information isn't paying very close attention.

the holocaust is a touchy subject, and i agree that it shouldn't be bandied about lightly. but the fact remains, the nazis would have had a fucking field day with internet tracking.

[willietheshakes]

no doubt there's no small amount of paranoia and hyperbole at work here, but anyone who doesn't think that nations like china and iran aren't using digital footprints to extort, harass and punish people over simple access of information isn't paying very close attention.

the holocaust is a touchy subject, and i agree that it shouldn't be bandied about lightly. but the fact remains, the nazis would have had a fucking field day with internet tracking.


Which isn't the point, at all.

China/Iran /=/ Kindle.

[William Haskins]

China/Iran /=/ Kindle.

wait. really?

hmmm...

show your work, please.

[willietheshakes]

wait. really?

hmmm...

show your work, please.

I'm just saying it would be one thing if the author of the piece were comparing human rights practices in China and Iran in the internet age with the Holocaust. Still likely offensive and ungrounded, but at least in the same zip code, meaning-wise.

He's not, though. He's comparing the fucking Kindle to the Holocaust.

[Medievalist]

It's not like the U. S. federal government has ever subpoenaed library records (http://www.llrx.com/features/libraryrecords.htm).

[kaitie]

Oh man...this is just sick. To be honest, I've never heard a comparison in recent years that I felt was appropriate. Anytime I hear anyone on television comparing any politician to a Nazi or the holocaust I just want to throw something at them. Way to diminish the meaning of one of (if not the) most important events in history people.

[Matera the Mad]

Ugh. Shudder. Urp...

Some friggin plastic-heads people have no sense of...sense.

[colealpaugh]

Oh man...this is just sick. To be honest, I've never heard a comparison in recent years that I felt was appropriate. Anytime I hear anyone on television comparing any politician to a Nazi or the holocaust I just want to throw something at them. Way to diminish the meaning of one of (if not the) most important events in history people.

Hey, I almost forgot the agent -- or his close, personal friend -- who called me a racist KKK member two days ago because I suggested a guy selling dominatrix thongs and charging $150 to read people's MS's reminded me of a fat guy wearing a sweat suit in a garage with a cigar stub.

Is hyperbole the new form of attack for guys who buy sports cars to make up for tiny private parts? It just sorta feels that way. Wonder what it is for women...

I don't even like the KKK. I did a feature story on them for my newspaper in 1984, or so, when I lived down in Chaos Titan's neck of the woods. Just some good 'ole boys and all, who ended up calling my wife at the time and telling her they were going to pour gas on her and light her on fire. The story was on the negative side, but I really did try to be fair. It's just hard to put a good spin on burning someone's chicken house to the ground because they're a different color.

[PoppysInARow]

I'm against e-readers, but that's just sick.

Besides, people can track what you're reading now. Through your purchases, and records at libraries. Sure, you can lend someone a book, but you can also lend someone an e-reader for the weekend.

Who in their right mind would compare having six million people killed int he Holocost to an update in technology? Seriously. People need to have their heads beaten in a few times.

Althought, that was probably the problem in the first place. :e2hammer:

[benbradley]

no doubt there's no small amount of paranoia and hyperbole at work here, but anyone who doesn't think that nations like china and iran aren't using digital footprints to extort, harass and punish people over simple access of information isn't paying very close attention.

the holocaust is a touchy subject, and i agree that it shouldn't be bandied about lightly. but the fact remains, the nazis would have had a fucking field day with internet tracking.
I recall from a story about Anne Frank how the Nazis took meticulous records of who they captured when, where they sent them and when they died or were killed. After the war any survivors were able to trace where their relatives were taken and when they died through these records.
Which isn't the point, at all.

China/Iran /=/ Kindle.
And it's not like the big search engines ever bowed to the Chinese government's demands of censorship so they could do business in China. No, wait, they DID do that...
I'm just saying it would be one thing if the author of the piece were comparing human rights practices in China and Iran in the internet age with the Holocaust. Still likely offensive and ungrounded, but at least in the same zip code, meaning-wise.

He's not, though. He's comparing the fucking Kindle to the Holocaust.
There are a growing number of devices that track users' use of them and then "phone home" with the info. I recall when the "Comet Cursor" thing did this ten years ago, there was a big outrage, but the more it happens, the less (and fewer!) people care. We don't own our computers and devices software-wise - the companies that sell the OS and apps and drivers truly "pwn" us about as well as a keylogger virus.

So yes, there's a lot of this evil tracking of what we do, what programs we run on our computers, how many dots of ink an inkjet printer has printed, what songs we listen to. Commercial enterprises do this because they can, and because it helps them market and sell future products more easily, creating "a better customer experience." And there's not much to keep a government entity from getting a court order to get that data.

Yeah, comparing that crap or really anything to the systematic killing of millions of people is over the top, but the comparison happens every day and it doesn't mean there's no concern or should be no concern with what's happening now.
Oh man...this is just sick. To be honest, I've never heard a comparison in recent years that I felt was appropriate. Anytime I hear anyone on television comparing any politician to a Nazi or the holocaust I just want to throw something at them. Way to diminish the meaning of one of (if not the) most important events in history people.
It's kind of the "N-word" (as in Nuclear) option in arguments and expositions. If you think something is really bad, one way to attempt to get people to notice is to compare it to the worst thing that's been done by and to humankind.