[bwi4]

This isn’t HN material, is it? Still, I’ll bite. Lamentations that this “censoring” ruins enjoyment of books is fully cancelled by those who think that the offensive material ruins enjoyment of books. I’m not offended by either, but my lived experience is unique to me and I respect others might feel differently.

Ultimately, the publisher wants to maximize the profit from this back catalog, whether by stoking controversy , or by making the product more appealing to a 21st century audience, or by avoiding negative publicity. I don’t have the data to speculate.

[atdrummond]

This is absolutely of interest to many here. It dovetails with plenty of areas explicitly interesting to the tech crowd, such as IP laws, copyright/trademark policy, DRM and remote editing of eBooks, etc.

[bwi4]

Fine, those are topics of interest. However, I don’t see any mention of IP laws, copyright/trademark policy or DRM, or remote editing of ebooks in the linked article.

[mc32]

Some of those arguments are the same ones the Gores were making with their PMRC and got roasted by most people, including then progressives and people concerned with 1A rights.

[nhchris]

To me, it's not about ruining or enhancing books. It's about falsifying them. They should remain artifacts of their time, so we may have perspective on changing attitudes, and not be gaslit that the sensitivity readers' sensibilities were shared by every author, from every time and place.

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

[bwi4]

Is that really the case here, or hyperbole? Is someone taking all the old copies from the used book store and destroying them? Is the library of Congress tossing out their first editions? What about non-sensitivity revisions, wouldn’t those also be Orwellian erasures of history?

The originals weren’t meant to be offensive, now they are to some. Publishers don’t want that. We’re talking childrens books here… people just won’t buy them if they think it will negatively impact a child.

Its culture war propaganda plain and simple. Nobody is dying on a hill over a character’s description in an old Goosebumps rag. I doubt anyone even remembers the character if the character was plump or cheerful, they remember the part about the ghost and the werewolf.

When you notice people making an such efforts to divide and distract, best check your wallet is secure.

[nhchris]

> What about non-sensitivity revisions, wouldn’t those also be Orwellian erasures of history?

In as much as they change more than minor spelling or punctuation mistakes, absolutely yes. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expurgation and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_Soviet_Union...

> Is someone taking all the old copies from the used book store and destroying them?

"We haven't yet falsified everything, and there are still non-falsified copies remaining, so why worry?" - original versions in some dusty corner of an old book store are no good if the great majority of people is only exposed to fakes, and one in ten people who read those fakes eventually, possibly years later, learns their version was altered in unspecified ways.

[bwi4]

This is an example of the slippery slope fallacy. In this case, the outcome is being wildly exaggerated for the purpose of inducing fear. The citation is a work of fiction.

I’m simply not convinced that a few edits to pop culture novels will lead to the downfall of free human society.

[tohnjitor]

The slippery slope fallacy turns out to be accurate far more often than the people who resort to invoking the slippery slope fallacy would care to admit.

[nhchris]

> I’m simply not convinced that a few edits to pop culture novels will lead to the downfall of free human society.

Of course not. This is just one nudge, one of many, not towards downfall, but towards change, in whatever average direction those in positions that create or edit culture push. It's just your history, slightly altered, one little lie at a time. So slowly you won't even notice. They used to make new works for this purpose, but now they've moved on to editing old ones. The slippery slope is a fallacy only until a trend line emerges from the data.

[W]e’ve kind of got to tell a lie: we’ll go back into history and there will be black people where, historically, there wouldn’t have been, and we won’t dwell on that. We’ll say, ‘To hell with it, this is the imaginary, better version of the world. By believing in it, we’ll summon it forth.’” - https://www.themarysue.com/steven-moffat-on-doctor-who-diver...

[bwi4]

Change happens, whether we like it or not. It’s the one certainty in life. Live in the present, brother. Attachment is the root of suffering.

[loktarogar]

Genuine question - haven't books been changing forever though? I thought that was why books had 2nd (etc) editions and not just reprintings.

Is this debate over that they're "tamer" rather than that books change?

[nhchris]

> haven't books been changing forever though?

Let's not use the wiggle room for correcting typos or translating from middle to modern English as an excuse to change the meaning of the written words while passing it off as the same book by the same author (and hiding behind "Nth edition" to deceive readers that the changes are insignificant).

And in as much as that falsification has been happening forever, it was just as wrong then as what is happening now.

[bwi4]

Translation requires editorial discretion and necessarily changes the meaning from the original language. Variation occurs between different translators of the same source material.

Editions frequently include new or updated information on the topic, not just corrections.

This is a disingenuous argument and I suspect you know it.

[nhchris]

> Translation requires editorial discretion and necessarily changes the meaning from the original language.

This is exactly the kind of excuse I was talking about. An honest translator tries to preserve meaning as much as possible. A dishonest one uses translation as an excuse to tweak meaning to their liking, and accuses objectors that it's either that, or a "nonsensical, word-for-word literal translation".