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A comment on Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay. Parent comment

Re:Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay by whynaut on Friday March 05, 2021 @09:44AM (#26357345)
> In still other cases, the book ban is enacted by a secondary market distributor, forcibly preventing one private legal owner of the work from selling it to another reader. This is what's happening here with eBay and the Dr. Seuss books.

That's just not true. This was Random House Books' decision, not eBay or Amazon. The marketplaces are just following orders.

> The decision won’t affect Dr. Seuss’s best-known works, which publisher Random House Books for Young Readers and several booksellers on Tuesday said would remain available to customers.

> The review of the six books at issue was conducted last year by Dr. Seuss Enterprises LP, which oversees Dr. Seuss’s publishing interests and ancillary areas.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/six-dr-seuss-books-are-dropped-...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay by NeverFade on Friday March 05, 2021 @09:59AM (#26357512)
> The marketplaces are just following orders.

First of all, hat-tip for using that chilling phrase in this unintentionally appropriate context.

Furthermore, eBay is a secondary market bookseller. As such, they facilitate legal sales of privately-owned books between individuals. They have absolutely no duty to "follow orders" by a publisher. In fact, publishers would shut down all secondary markets if they could - it would help their sales of new books.

Nowhere in the article is it mentioned that a publisher "ordered" eBay to stop selling the books, and such "order" would be invalid and ridiculous.

This is a decision by eBay to flex their corporate muscles to ban books they find politically disagreeable.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay by sebmellen on Friday March 05, 2021 @11:45AM (#26358888)
I am so comforted to hear that the marketplaces are “just following orders.” I know that no one following orders should ever be held accountable for the actions of their superiors. Really, things are good when people just follow orders.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay by NeverFade on Friday March 05, 2021 @12:02PM (#26359098)
Nothing bad has ever happened as long as everyone "just follows orders"!
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Re:Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay by matteocapucci on Saturday March 06, 2021 @02:27AM (#26365823)
Nuremberg intensifies
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