The Sword and Laser discussion

We give our last thoughts on The Goblin Emperor, kick of our April pick, Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett and discuss why some author names are bigger than their titles. But what really gets this episode going is the debate about whether a reader has the right to "clean up" an author's language.

https://www.patreon.com/creation?hid=...
http://swordandlaser.com/home/2015/4/...

Someone should make a rival to the clean reader app that adds more swear words and phrases to books, the more inappropriate the placement the better ;-)

Tassie Dave wrote: "Someone should make a rival to the clean reader app that adds more swear words and phrases to books, the more inappropriate the placement the better ;-)"

https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...

Tassie Dave wrote: "Someone should make a rival to the clean reader app that adds more swear words and phrases to books, the more inappropriate the placement the better ;-)"

I would like to see an app that turned everything into Jane Austen English. Not because I want to read everything in Jane Austen English, but because the results would be amusing*.

* okay, amusing for about ten minutes...

Pat wrote: "Tassie Dave wrote: "Someone should make a rival to the clean reader app that adds more swear words and phrases to books, the more inappropriate the placement the better ;-)"

https://www.goodreads...."

I missed that. Thanks Pat. That's hilarious :-) Now I want someone to actually make it.

Tassie Dave wrote: "Someone should make a rival to the clean reader app that adds more swear words and phrases to books, the more inappropriate the placement the better ;-)"

Sandersons Reckoners books could actually use this :P

I wouldn't get your hopes up about Rhianna continuing the Discworld series. Her writing style is different from her father's and her writing goals are also vastly different. (For one, she wants to be a video game writer and not a novelist.)

I think she has previously said on twitter that she doesn't want to touch the DW books. We'll see.

I understand that US law doesn't interpret moral rights (e.g., the rights of a creator to protect the integrity of their work, even if they've already sold, transferred, or negotiated rights of ownership, distribution, etc.) the same way as other jurisdictions. But other countries have taken them very seriously in the past. I'm curious what would happen if an author took Clean Reader to court on such a claim. Could they win? Could the app be removed from app stores in some countries but not others?

They'd have to also outlaw the felt-tip pen - another app that serves the same function, but with paper copies.

This doesn't even do a felt-tip pen though, it's like if you put a tiny sticky note on top of every bad word and changed it. Are we going to ban image filters next because they ruin intent? I don't even understand how this is debatable, like maybe if there was some kind of push to change books on the market.

One of the things I liked about Reckoners was it was finally a YA book where characters talked like me and my friends did.

Interestingly, when it comes to physical books, there was a motion to publish versions of Huck Finn where the "n" word was censored out to make it more "High school" reading friendly.

And that was unanimously turned down and thought wrong. That it was essentially an attempt to erase history and that doing so would stifle discussions on how that word was used.

Here, it was the fact that Huck Finn was a "historical" book and that the censorship was attempting to erase history.

I'm a white person though, so I can't really weigh in on this. I just think it's interesting how this issue changes form with different types of words. On the one hand, it's erasing words for sensibilities, on the other hand erasing aspects of history that shouldn't be erased. They happened and they're important to talk about.

Publishing a new version is different then releasing an autofilter. It would be like making the bass/treble knobs illegal on speakers because it would be changing the artistic intent of the music. *which it actually does do.

^ Ah fair point. They're not really comparable.

One of the original problems with the clean reader app was at one point it sold copies that then were modified without author consent using a partnership with a distributor. In addition, it goes beyond swear words to things like vagina turning into being "bottom", as one example. While yes, the filtering just the swear words might not change intent too much, the swap in the example I gave does it in a major way.

What makes clean reader different than blacking out a paper version is the fact you own the paper version, the electronic versions, from my understanding, are all owned under license. Since the store's now gone it's now a partial question of whether or not uploading your bought ebooks from other services violates that agreement.

Looking at Amazon's licenses you're only allowed to use Amazon software, via the Kindle or reading app and it doesn't look like you're allowed to modify it either either on your own or with another service. If you want the full agreement look at the Additional Amazon Software Terms at the bottom of the main Amazon agreement. The parts I pulled my info from are pretty wordy and my post is pretty long as is.

Aaron wrote: "Publishing a new version is different then releasing an autofilter. It would be like making the bass/treble knobs illegal on speakers because it would be changing the artistic intent of the music...."

*flashbacks to arguments with old-school-hi-fi-enthusiast father about those newfangled devices that let you not just up bass and treble but fiddle about with all sorts of characteristics, with pre-set 'jazz', 'classical', 'choral' etc settings. Though mostly I just used it to amp up the bass*

[He was wrong. Leaving aside the argument about whether it's ok to make your own art from what the composer gives you, it misses out the issue of recording vs music. Amping up the bass may screw with the artistic intent of deutsche grammaphon or whomever... but imo if the final bass line of the toccata from the Suite gothique isn't making your ears bleed and and bones splinter, you're not abiding by the artistic intent of the composer! If it doesn't do that on your CD, that's just because a CD can't replicate the experience of actually standing in the same room as an organ.]

...and this post was entirely tangential. Unless a publishing company starts objecting to the use of these filters but a writer says they approve (or vice versa) - then the 'whose intent' question can arise.

Tiffany wrote: "One of the original problems with the clean reader app was at one point it sold copies that then were modified without author consent using a partnership with a distributor. In addition, it goes be..."

But the issues around licensing only address the law, not the morality of the issue. Authors have no moral right to control all purchased copies of their text. If they (or their publishers) have managed to finagle legal privileges that grant them that theoretical power, that does not alter the issue of what their real rights are, only their legal rights. And the law, to quote one author, is a ass.
That's not to say that it's necessarily bad that buyers are now being limited to 'licenses' instead of 'property' (although it is). But good or bad, when you win a political battle to give you more power than you have any right to, and then someone flouts the law by doing something they have every right to do, you don't get to act all outraged and try to whip up moral indignation. If you think your legal rights are being infringed, go and protect your legal rights by legal means - don't try to hoodwink people into thinking that your legal privileges are an entitlement!


[In any case, iirc the legal status of the claim to only be selling a 'licence' is itself highly debateable, and I think the EU and the ECHR have both started to take issue with these claims. I've only seen that mentioned wrt to software 'licences', but I would think the same would also apply to written works.]

I'm curious as to why authors are in an uproar. They wrote the book the way they wanted to write it. This app doesn't change the original work. It's still there - the vision. What a reader gets from reading it is always out of their control. At least they are buying the book first (hopefully).

I guess I can do whatever I want, like Tom said, with my copy. Thomas Jefferson sliced his Bible up into pieces and kept only the parts he wanted. As long as I don't sell my chopped up version, who cares? I mean, I could use a book for toilet paper and it wouldn't affect the author.

I personally have no problem with swearing and blasphemy and sex so I would never use such an app, but if someone wants a Reader's Digest version, and they're willing to purchase the original first, then I don't care what they do with it at home.

It's like a movie version of a book - how can a bad adaptation "ruin" the book itself? It can't.

It can damage a writer's reputation for the general public though, so I suppose if that's what an author is worried about they have a legitimate complaint. Like, if there are lists published of which authors get run through the app most often then they are labeled as a writer of filth or something. That would suck.

It's a shame some people have issues with words, and I believe most puritanical things like this app are absurd - but so is a lot of humanity :)

Wastrel wrote: "Tiffany wrote: "One of the original problems with the clean reader app was at one point it sold copies that then were modified without author consent using a partnership with a distributor. In addi..."

I'm surprised legal challenges haven't made them change the word from buy to rent.

Michele wrote: "I guess I can do whatever I want, like Tom said, with my copy."

If you don't have the right to sell your copy of an ebook (either privately or to a secondhand reseller), then why would you have the right to do anything else with your copy? I don't think first-sale doctrine applies here.

Since I don't have the right to resell it, then what difference does it make if I make changes to the version I see on my screen? None. Not to you or the author. Only to me.

Before ebooks, did book retailers offer a service to black out objectionable content in the books you bought from them?

You do have the right to sell your copy of an ebook. That right just may not currently be recognised by the law - but rights don't go away just because governments are unjust.

In any case, the legal situation in the EU seems very confused - there is a right to resell software in general, apparently, but seemingly not computer games specifically - and the law hasn't seemingly been tested with regard to ebooks yet.

Wastrel wrote: "You do have the right to sell your copy of an ebook. That right just may not currently be recognised by the law - but rights don't go away just because governments are unjust.

In any case, the le..."

Good luck w/ that if USA (my country) can force everyone via trade agreements to have DMCA-like laws.

Joe Informatico wrote: "Before ebooks, did book retailers offer a service to black out objectionable content in the books you bought from them?"

I'm sure if you supplied your bookseller with a supply of little stickers and paid him adequately for his time, he'd have been happy to do it for you!

Michele wrote: "...if someone wants a Reader's Digest version..."

I think that kind of sums it up actually, given that Reader's Digest versions are not highly thought of. Maybe it invalidates those readers opinions in conversations with people who may have read, er... other versions, perhaps including the original?

I think the question of the n-word in Huck Finn came up earlier. The only version I'd read until I was 41 was translated into French and abridged for 10 year olds, (I was 7 and France was where I'd spent my life to that point). So there I was, later on, thinking 'sheesh, why don't they just do a search and replace on a couple of words!'

Of course, I had no idea what the book was really like, or what it was about, or why it existed, or the fact that said n-word appears about ten times a page.

People who modify their books expose themselves to a similar situation.

I think it is funny that some of the reactions to the clean reader app that is based on criticizing censorship, then goes on to suggest that the app itself be censored.

Eric wrote: "Good luck w/ that if USA (my country) can force everyone via trade agreements to have DMCA-like laws..."

What happens, hypothetically, if you resell your Kindle device with a load of books still on it?

IMHO - the app is legal and should be available for sale but it makes me sad and I really don't want to live in a world that would do what this app does. If you don't want to read the book as the author wrote it - then don't buy the book.

Good guess Tom. I forget what show it was, but Marsters was busy doing something. Maybe Caprica? Based on the time it came out. Not sure how far in advance they record those.

The book came out in August 2011, and Marsters imdb credits for 2011 are pretty light, but his credits for 2010 busier.

Good show I like the passion about the clean reader app and the discussion about both books is much appreciated. This show just keeps getting better.

Anne wrote:
What happens, hypothetically, if you resell your Kindle device with a load of books still on it? "

I think when you remove your account information from the device it automatically wipes all of your information too. Unless you have sideloaded a lot of books on it too, the books will should disappear along with your account information. Theoretically you could sell it with your information still in it but then it would also have your credit card and they would buy new books and charge them to you.

I found that I didn't care for Chuck Wendig's books. I keep thinking that his concepts are neat and then bouncing off the books themselves, partially because of what feels to me like an excess of language. Individually, the words themselves don't bother me too much, but a whole stream of them leaves me feeling like the world is trying to wear away at me. But I also dropped them for other reasons. Blackbirds was far too grim right off the bat. I thought that the worldbuilding was a little shaky in Under the Empyrean Sky, a little too direct with its "monocrops are evil" metaphor, and then I hit the (view spoiler)[corn zombies (hide spoiler)] and I just couldn't take that seriously.

I'm having a really hard time thinking of topics to discuss about Wyrd Sisters. I read the book so long ago and enough times that I'm having trouble breaking it down into pieces. It just kind of is, all of a piece, in my brain.

Joanna wrote: "I'm having a really hard time thinking of topics to discuss about Wyrd Sisters. I read the book so long ago and enough times that I'm having trouble breaking it down into pieces. It just kind of is, all of a piece, in my brain"

Me too, which is why I'm actually going to reread it. I can't separate the Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg from this book from the aggregate of these characters I have from the eight or nine other Witches books.

I've been reading Daniel's comments over on the First Impressions thread and I just can't reconcile his experience of Granny Weatherwax with my impression of her. That could be just argumentative trolling on his part, but I think it's worthwhile to go back and have a look.

There's one other thing I'm interested in rereading for as well, in that a relative who is actually a school librarian has never been able to get into Pratchett and her thesis is that Pratchett writes more towards a male taste. Given the multitude of fans of both genders, I don't agree, but I'm probably a lot more aware of gender issues now than I was 20 years ago when I last read it. (I'm still male though; that might be limiting for this particular argument :) )

Lindsay wrote: "Me too, which is why I'm actually going to reread it. "

I just reread it! I enjoyed it, but it's like watching a movie again that you've seen a thousand times. I don't think of the choices, I just enjoy that the next bit is coming along just I remembered and it's better than I remembered. It's hard to think of the choices that went into the writing of it. I'll keep thinking of it. A year or two ago, my husband and I watched the original Star Wars trilogy on remastered DVD, and by unspoken agreement, tried to take it in as best we could as if it were the first time. It's darker that way. So I *can* force my brain to reread an old favorite that way, but it takes work.

Incidentally, when I read Pratchett, I find British diction and idiom creeping into my speech and writing. Austen has a similar effect.

Lindsay wrote: "Joanna wrote: "I'm having a really hard time thinking of topics to discuss about Wyrd Sisters. I read the book so long ago and enough times that I'm having trouble breaking it down int..."

At the very least, the first book w/ Cohen the Barbarian and the Naked Dragon riders is definitely for the male taste.

Eric wrote: "Lindsay wrote: "Joanna wrote: "I'm having a really hard time thinking of topics to discuss about Wyrd Sisters. I read the book so long ago and enough times that I'm having trouble brea..."

Is it? Or are the nubile dragon riders a fairly unsympathetic satire of the state of the fantasy genre?

The swear words thing is intriguing. I mean, when reading the Goblin Emperor I would tend to glaze over the long names and recognize them by the first one or two syllables. So in that sense I'm changing the names. If I read aloud to a young child and saw a swear word I would probably change it to "fiddlesticks" or somesuch. So as for swear words, I guess I'm okay with people changing them, since reading is already such a personal experience. That's especially true since anyone reading the book has generally purchased it, so this could extend the reach of the author.

Just my two-cents re: the "clean reader" app:

I can't help but think that it's kind of pointless. I imagine the type of person who gets offended by a book having bad language isn't going to suddenly like it because the bad language is removed - the book is still probably going to contain tons of other stuff they're likely to find offensive.

Plus, programs like this can't understand context, so it's just as likely to censor something that doesn't need to be censored in the first place.

Then again, this could result in some hilarious stuff, like when they censor movies on TV or songs on the radio.

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU FIND A STRANGER IN THE ALPS.

^I remember when I was a honkin' Kevin Smith Fan, we talked about TV censorship for "Mallrats" on his board. ABC turned "phat chronic blunt" into "phat karate punch." Oh, how we mocked that one.

How is changing curse words different from any other subversive reading of a text where authorial intent in undermined? Technology just makes this particular type of reading easier.

There is nothing sacred about authorial intent or the author's intended text. There is nothing sh***y about taking a book differently from what the author wanted.

That app would make this a silent movie!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lElf...

I'm really against censorship. I think mollycoddling the public in such a way is detrimental to societal development. It's short-sighted, rose-colored work. To me, this is akin to allowing people to walk around art museums and slap black bars on all the exposed nipples. If this is the kind of prude a person is, they should stay home, or to come full circle, go read another book.

I used "find and replace" on a book a few years back. I swapped "fanny" for "bum" because "fanny" means something different in Britain and I just couldn't get over all those fanny packs.

Kenneth wrote: "I'm really against censorship. I think mollycoddling the public in such a way is detrimental to societal development. It's short-sighted, rose-colored work. To me, this is akin to allowing people t..."

No, it isn't. It's allowing people to wear glasses that let people see black bars over the nipples.

There is a fundamental difference between forcing someone else to do something, and merely doing that thing yourself. Only the former is 'censorship'. The latter is an eccentricity of taste.

Kenneth wrote: "I'm really against censorship."

Anyone is free to read the book any way they like. Saying you can't read the book this way or that seems more like censorship to me.

To me, this is akin to allowing people to walk around art museums and slap black bars on all the exposed nipples.

Except a person using that app in no way changes how anyone else reads a book, unlike slapping on said black bars.

Okay, fair enough. I get quite animated about things like this and over-react. I think people who choose to self-censor are depriving themselves of the authentic experience, and if they want to do that, I will look down upon them for it. Haughty? Yes. But honest, too.

William wrote: "I used "find and replace" on a book a few years back. I swapped "fanny" for "bum" because "fanny" means something different in Britain and I just couldn't get over all those fanny packs."

My inner boy still gets a chuckle when their use of the word fanny in a TV show makes a statement unintentionally funny. ;-)

We call a "fanny pack" a "bum bag" in Australia. Which is silly because most people wear them around front.

Michele wrote: "I guess I can do whatever I want, like Tom said, with my copy. Thomas Jefferson sliced his Bible up into pieces and kept only the parts he wanted. As long as I don't sell my chopped up version, who cares? I mean, I could use a book for toilet paper and it wouldn't affect the author."

God didn't sue Jefferson so that should set a precedent that we can do whatever we want with the Bible :) Running it through the app that adds swear words would be great, all those references to Jesus F***ing Christ would be hysterical.

But seriously, if you think this app is a good idea haven't you read 1984?

I'd agree that the Clean Reader app seems rather pointless as any book with cursing is liable to have more offensive content within, but listening to this discussion brought to mind the story about a mother reading her daughter the Hobbit with one change: making Bilbo a girl.

I googled to job my memory and found an article by Cory Doctorow that praised the change:
http://boingboing.net/2013/12/30/gend...

A trip to BoinBoing's mainpage found Cory Doctorow calling the Clean Reader app censorship, but defending the app's existence:
http://boingboing.net/2015/03/25/i-ha...

Do any of the people against the Clean Reader app oppose a mother changing Bilbo to a girl for her daughter's benefit? If there was an app that gave books a more equitable gender ratio, would any of the people against the Clean Reader app be against it? After all, changing Bilbo to a girl clearly goes against Tolkien's authorial intent.

While I would be more than willing to change a character's gender for a daughter's bedtime story and wouldn't use the Clean Reader app, it seems like respect for authorial intent only extends as far as a person's own beliefs. It's paramount when the author's intent is in line with our own, but irrelevant when the author does something we dislike.