PayPal, the online payments arm of eBay, has sparked a furor in the publishing world by asking some e-book distributors to ban books that contain “obscene” themes including rape, bestiality or incest.
PayPal sent an e-mail on Feb. 18 to Mark Coker, founder of e-book publisher and distributor Smashwords, saying it would “limit” the company’s PayPal account unless Smashwords removed from its Web site e-books “containing themes of rape, incest, bestiality and underage subjects.”
PayPal sent similar warnings to online publishers and booksellers including BookStrand.com and eXcessica, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
A PayPal spokesman confirmed the company sent such notifications but declined to be more specific.
EFF and other groups including the Authors Guild, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression and the Association of American Publishers were planning yesterday to send a letter to PayPal asking the company to reverse its policy.
PayPal “is now holding free speech hostage by clamping down on sales of certain types of erotica,” the groups said, according to a draft of the letter.
“We strongly object to PayPal functioning as an enforcer of public morality and inhibiting the right to buy and sell constitutionally protected material.”
PayPal said it was acting in part because banks and credit-card companies it works with restrict such content, according to an e-mail PayPal sent to Smashwords on Feb. 24.
“Our banking partners and credit-card associations have taken a very strict stance on this subject matter,” PayPal said in the e-mail.
“Our relationships with the banking partners are absolutely critical in order to provide the online and mobile services we [offer] . . . to our customers. Therefore, we have to remain in compliance with their rules, which prohibit content involving rape, bestiality or incest.”
Spokespeople at American Express, MasterCard, Visa and big card-issuing banks JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo did not respond to requests for comment.