So PayPal Wants to Play Censor...

I wrote this in response to this article in today's Globe and Mail where PayPal is telling the vendors it deals with to ban books PayPal deems "obscene:"

As an author with books published via Smashwords - no, not that sort - I find this attempt at corporate censorship disgusting. Free speech is an absolute right. Yes, you may find what other people are saying and writing to be juvenile, stupid or even disgusting  - but you don’t have to look at it or read it do, you? And for every idiot who stands up in a crowded movie theatre to shout “fire,” there are also hundreds who will stand up and say, “No, you idiot, there is no fire.” That’s your right.

At a time when our civil rights are increasingly under pressure (our right to privacy for example, through the Conservatives’ electronic spying legislation) we should not yield so lightly our most precious of civil rights – free speech to cold, grey corporate interests.