[p-e-w]

Thank you for pointing this out. That list of “banned books” (that were unbanned long ago, and are now considered great literature) indeed seems more like virtue signaling.

There are equivalent books in our own time, and using those instead would make the project feel more like an actual defense of Free Speech and less like a quip of “goodness gracious, people were prudes in the 1920s”, which everyone already agrees with.

[rickoooooo]

These are just examples I could legally include in a public github repository to demonstrate the functionality. The alternative would be to include copyrighted works or nothing. The user is free to include any books that are important to them.

[hoppyhoppy2]

As has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread, "books in our own time" tend to still be under copyright and might not survive long in a public code repository.

[p-e-w]

There is at least one “banned” book, written by a former dictator, whose copyright expired in 2015, 70 years after his death in 1945.

But that’s a good ban of course, because Freedom of Speech only matters when it concerns speech I agree with.

[evil-olive]

> But that’s a good ban of course, because Freedom of Speech only matters when it concerns speech I agree with.

putting hypothetical words in other peoples' mouths like this seems like it must be a pretty exhausting way to try to make a point.

quoting from the article:

> I think the idea hosting banned books specifically came to me after having read Ben Brown's short story Library. It's been a while since I read it, but if I recall there are characters in the story who maintain a "library" which acts as a digital archive of creative works, owners manuals, 3d models, etc. Things that others might find useful or interesting that you wouldn't want to lose should they be somehow wiped from the Internet.

the purpose of a project like this seems to be not just "here's some banned books" but rather "here's some banned books that I think are worth sharing / reading". if you think Mein Kampf belongs on that list, just say so directly.

but also the premise of your comment is wrong, because Mein Kampf is not banned at all: https://www.amazon.com/Mein-Kampf-Adolf-Hitler-ebook/dp/B002...

[p-e-w]

> the purpose of a project like this seems to be not just "here's some banned books" but rather "here's some banned books that I think are worth sharing / reading"

Those aren’t banned books though. They are books that used to be banned in another century.

It’s like saying “I’m a criminal because I criticized the Pope”.

[evil-olive]

> Those aren’t banned books though. They are books that used to be banned in another century.

as has been covered in multiple comments elsewhere in the thread, the "banned" books that are checked-in to the repo are examples that were used because they're in the public domain.

[wiml]

Is Mein Kampf banned? It's currently in print and available from your friendly bookseller, in multiple editions spanning a couple translations and the original German. Of the two public library systems that cover my area, one has it (12 holds on 4 copies) and the other doesn't but does have other books by Hitler. I expect it's assigned reading in poli-sci classes.