Books in the Shadows

Recall the brouhaha in February and March 2012 between PayPal and Smashwords? It’s been a year and a half since then; time for a retrospective look.

It started when PayPal told Smashwords to remove all content referring to bestiality, rape, and incest from its website or else its customers could no longer buy books using PayPal. The problem for PayPal was that it was backed by major credit card companies; all of whom had reputations to uphold. They couldn’t be seen as permitting, let alone adv...