Mark Lynas makes a complaint about what he describes as possible censorship related to the release of his new book The God Species. Apparently, it got pulled from Amazon.com in the UK. He writes:
The God Species withdrawn from Amazon – censorship?
Starting some time on Friday morning a strange note appeared on the Amazon.co.uk page selling The God Species paperback. This read that the book had been withdrawn from sale “because a customer recently told us that the item he or she received was not as described”. Since then Amazon has stopped selling the book, and despite attempts by my publisher to resolve the situation the book is still not on sale.
Screenshot:
and goes on to say:
I now understand that Amazon is likely to have removed the book from sale because its automated systems received a number of similar complaints about the book. So a relatively small number of people, perhaps as few as five, can conspire to get a new work taken off Amazon’s web site. Amazon says it will quickly examine whether the complaints are justified but in the meantime potential customers arriving at its web site will be told the book is unavailable. The book’s reputation will be damaged because of the natural assumption that there is indeed something wrong with it that obliges Amazon to remove it from sale. Even if Amazon puts the book back on Monday afternoon, damage has been done.
Well, maybe. The Streisand effect is now kicking in. For example, I was not aware of this new book until I received tips on it being “censored”. And, Lucia has now weighed in, uncritically. The Guardian has made an issue out of it too.
While Lynas has recently come to terms with his previous erroneous views on greens, Wow, Lynas tells it like it is. for which I applaud him, he is also known for doing outrageous things to get attention, such as doing a pie in the face to Bjørn Lomborg at his book signing for The Skeptical Environmentalist, a book that doesn’t seem to be that different from The God Species based on the description.
So, given Lynas past behavior, I can’t tell if what we are seeing is “censorship”, or if it is simply a cleverly staged faux takedown (easy to do anonymously online these days) to kick in The Streisand effect thus making thousands more people aware of his new book, and perhaps buy it later? People often want what they can’t have more than something they can get anywhere. What better way to boost sales than to make the book look taboo and then get media to start hollering about it as the New Statesman has done?
Right now, the Amazon UK website continues the restriction, and Amazon US website has no restrictions, and allows pre-orders.
So, as I said, given that Lynas in the past has tried to shut down Bjørn Lomborg’s book signing, a form of censorship itself, I can’t take his claims at face value. We’ll see how it plays out.
Hopefully, either way, Amazon will adjust their policy to prevent such problems in the future, no matter what the motive. Perhaps taking a “innocent until proven guilty” stance on product removal might be more productive.
Added clarification: For hardware, software, appliances, etc, I can see the point of such a policy to limit liability and damage to customers. But, we are talking about a book with the opinions of an author, and who offers a warranty with opinion? If we allowed such things, we’d have takedowns daily of newspaper articles worldwide where the catchy headline doesn’t quite match the body of the text.
Hopefully Amazon will implement a separate policy on book sales to prevent such problems and cries of censorship in the future.
h/t to Barry Woods
UPDATE: Within 6 hours of this posting, the restriction has been removed, so much for Mr. Lynas brief worry of “censorship” from Amazon.
OTOH, his website at http://www.marklynas.org/ now returns a “403 error” – forbidden, which checks out from two different networks and the three different browsers I have access to.
Strange.
– Anthony
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I’m putting my money on:
“simply a cleverly staged faux takedown (easy to do anonymously online these days) to kick in The Streisand effect thus making thousands more people aware of his new book, and perhaps buy it later? People often want what they can’t have more than something they can get anywhere. What better way to boost sales than to make the book look taboo and then get media to start hollering about it as the New Statesman has done?”
Standard sales tactics nowdays.
“You can always go out to http://www.abe.com to go buy a book.”
Abe Books is owned by Amazon:
http://www.abebooks.com/books/CompanyInformation/
jeez said on July 9, 2011 at 12:46 pm:
I’m just seeing simple “403 Forbidden” errors, for the link in the post and marklynas.org, nothing resembling “hacking.”
With the link being posted here on WUWT, Lynas’ site traffic probably shot up 8000%, at least. It might have looked like a distributed Denial-Of-Service attack, which Lynas may ironically expect to be launched by we “Deniers,” triggering a site lockdown.
But if he wants to claim it was “hacking” to get a sales boost for his book (“They’re doing anything they can to censor my message!”), fine, let him try it. Just look at how well it’s worked to suggest censorship on Amazon!
All the versions that are not out of stock are available from within EU. So it seems to be just BS.
Amazon in the UK said that distribution of the book was getting held up “
A customer. One customer.
Er, WTF? One customer? WTFF? Did that customer (“he or she”) get a copy of Earth in the Balance in a dust jacket from Lynas’ book? Were there pages misprinted, or sections bound out of sequence? Dusted with pathogenic E. coli from some batch of organically-fertilized Kraut cucumbers?
Might be defects in a print run, or in the binding process, might be mischief in the warehouse at the publisher, or at Amazon.com’s facility in the UK.
Hm. Is it available from Amazon by way of their Kindle portal? It’s advertised on Amazon.com in these United States as available both in text and as an e-book effective 1 November 2011.
Can someone tell me what the book is about? I am an Anthrodeist, so the title is tempting. But … I don’t wish to support ideololgical enemies.
What is an Anthrodeist? An Anthrodeist
believesknows that Man invented God in His own image and has given consciousness to inaminate matter.Just a thought … Is the Green Movement going through a Bowel Movement? 🙂
Update: I’ve just re-checked the Amazon-UK site. The “Item under review” notice has now gone, and the book is flagged “In stock”.
Amazon’s “Item Under Review” note indicates that the book may still be available from other sellers on the page. This suggests that the problem is with a specific vendor not with the content of the book. Perhaps, as some have suggested, people are receiving a version different than they ordered, which would make Amazon’s response entirely reasonable. I might take the time to explore the truth of this, but life is way to short to be wasting a valuable piece of it on something which appears to be very, very much ado about nothing.
Anyone who has worked in printing knows how easily printing errors can be made–whole sections repeated are not unusual–and it may only affect a small percentage of the run. But you can’t send something like that out. As automated as printing is, it still has the problem of human error.
I don’t think Lynas is pulling a marketing trick here. He was very open on his blog and responded to a lot of skeptics coming to his thread about the IPCC / Greenpeace connection. I suspect it’s harrasments by the anti nuclear Green faction. The Lomborg stunt might have been clever self-marketing but this here…. don’t think so – no cameras around. It would be a *worse* marketing stunt than his previous efforts. Why should he do less efficient tricks now than he did in the past.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
July 9, 2011 at 1:22 pm
“With the link being posted here on WUWT, Lynas’ site traffic probably shot up 8000%, at least. It might have looked like a distributed Denial-Of-Service attack, which Lynas may ironically expect to be launched by we “Deniers,” triggering a site lockdown.”
On the aforementioned thread he actually acted genuinely surprised by how nice various skeptics were to him, so i don’t think he expects an attack from us.
I had that very problem with my own web server today (I own and operate them). It was a problem with anti-leeching parameters being set. This is done to prevent people from not only linking, but including content in their site that is served by the remote site. It is bandwidth theft, and sometimes the prevention for it will throw a 403 error.
REPLY: For hardware, software, appliances, etc, yes that is a valid liability restriction policy, but for books with opinion? That’s my point and I’ll make it clearer in the text. – Anthony
Well, that is a good point, but the problem is that Amazon wouldn’t know that the item is being flagged because of an agenda until it is made clear to them. If I were running an E-retailer I would certainly be concerned with the credibility of my products. If someone is selling what appears to be a book by all account, but turns out to never actually be received, or in the case of this flag, you get a box of apple cores instead of a book, that would create a credibility problem for customers buying from your e-store.
If I were the business person, I would be much more comfortable explaining to vendors, whose market share I am expanding, that the process of vetting their product is important and that if I receive complaints, I have to investigate them before I can return their products to my marketplace.
Lynas welcome to the real (climate) world. You dared to cross the line and question the IPCC, the high priests of climate science. Now you will pay the price for your heresy.
This was predicted weeks ago at the time of your heresy. This author among other told you what would happen. Lucky it is only a book. Not so long ago it would have meant stoning or burning at the stake.
Climate science is settled science. This means you are not allowed to question. Ask questions on real (climate) you will be censored. Ask agin and you will be banned. Question the IPCC and you will be excommunicated. Lynas, you have been excommunicated.
You are in good company. Steve McIntyre, Judith Curry, they dared to question. Now you have dared. The question is, will you roll over and die as so many other have done, cowering in fear, or will you shout out? Freedom of speech, freedom of the press. The USA is the Land of the Free, the Home of the Brave. Fact or fantasy? The whole world is watching.
Look at; http://www.banned-books.org.uk/
Lady Chatterleys Lover
Catcher in the Rye
SpyCatcher
Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone
For Whom the Bell Tolls
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
The Satanic verses
So will this book now join the list of best sellers of all time ? Lets hope so.
This martyr complex skeptics seem to try and wrap themselves in is quite sad, this entire story is a nonevent as the book was quickly reinstated (in just hours in fact) for info the amazon system does not work on just 5-6 votes but a percentage of total sales, so a small number of votes may get a book blocked but only in the total sales of that book are around 15-20.
I find some of the comments reviewing this book rather odd, several claim to have not even read it, one seems to have not purchased it at all and is complaining about censorship. This is the oddest as you can’t leave either a comment or a review on a book with Amazon unless you have already purchased it.
From Mark’s update on his site.
Now on Lynas’ site:
This comes after previously stating:
Oh well, he’s gathered a boatload of 5-star reviews from people who haven’t read the book and are merely doing it to protest the great “Amazon censorship conspiracy.” The cumulative star rating is what shows up on the listing, right under the title and author, so many people will immediately conclude it’s some Great Scientific Work without knowing how it got said rating.
Mission Accomplished.
As of this afternoon (10th July) the Amazon UK site is showing the book as available in either print or Kindle versions
My reason for doubting the censorship claims: Amazon would sell any book. Including the classic Vreni Schneider: Annemarie Moser-Pröll, FIS Alpine Ski World Cup, Winter Olympic Games, Slalom Skiing, Giant Slalom Skiing, Half Man Half Biscuit. No, that is not a joke. That is the title. Kinda makes me think of ManBearPig, lol.
Check this story out:
http://www.chrisrand.com/blog/index.php/2010/02/27/odd-tale-alphascript-publishing-betascript-publishing/
Heh. There were thirteen reviews at Amazon UK about the book, one was a one-star asking for equal treatment with regards to fighting against censorship for both (C)AGW and skeptic books. I wrote my own “review” quoting what I did in my last comment, said people should feel free to keep giving those 5-star reviews to a book they didn’t read to protest the great “Amazon censorship conspiracy,” and I was giving it 1 star due to Lynas’ prompt statement about the “malicious attempt at censorship.”
Apparently they read the submitted reviews rather closely. My review didn’t make it, but the “didn’t read” reviews are all gone. There remains one review by someone who apparently did read it going by the content, who didn’t gripe about “Amazon’s censorship.”
Even today, one person’s opinion can make a difference.
☺
Good post. A reminder to think things through before jumping to conclusions. Very interesting!
Squeaky wheels get the grease at Amazon.com. – So start squeakin!:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/contact-us/general-questions.html?
Send them an E-mail and tell them how you really feel. (LIKE BOYCOTTING!!)