OK, it’s not nearly as bad as I feared. Paypal are refusing to process payments for books including “rape for tittilation” rather than any mention of rape at all. And of course, Paypal deciding they don’t want to being a certain business is different from government censorship.
I still think it’s a bad decision. For one thing, who gets to decide what’s titillating? And I’m still worried that the definition of unacceptable content might creep further and further until it includes “any opinion we disagree with.”
But for now, I can set up my site with Paypal, which is presumably what most of my customers would chose to use. But I’ll be looking for an alternative, too. More choice for my customers (please, please let me have customers!) and an escape route if things do turn bad with Paypal.
On a lighter note, I just discovered this haiku by Manchester punk poet John Cooper Clark:
To convey one’s mood
In seventeen syllables
Is very diffic.
That cheered me up!
