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  3. Amazon is under fire again, this time for profiling from ebooks on terror, hate and violence. The Muslim Council of Britain has

Amazon is under fire again, this time for profiling from ebooks on terror, hate and violence. The Muslim Council of Britain has

admin2014-06-25  9
问题     Amazon is under fire again, this time for profiling from ebooks on terror, hate and violence. The Muslim Council of Britain has called on Amazon to take "proper responsibility" for the content of books on its site, with one e-book on sale reportedly including images of the Qur’an being burned and a woman being hanged.
    All booksellers make money out of books featuring terror or violence whether it’s Homer’s Iliad or JG Ballard’s Crash but virtual booksellers appear to present a new threat to public morality. Once upon a time, we could rely on traditional publishers to make sound editorial decisions to publish obscenity and bloodshed, now anyone can do it.
    The last time Amazon faced an outcry, over a book on paedophilia, it initially defended its actions with some guts, stating that it was censorship not to sell certain books simply because we or others believe their message was objectionable and that it supported the right of every individual to make their own purchasing decisions. Ultimately, however, the book was withdrawn. A month later, Amazon was reported as having removed some erotica from its Kindle store. This was the same period in which it censored WikiLeaks, arguing that the website was in breach of its terms of service and was putting human rights workers at risk.
    Amazon’s inconsistency has made it more vulnerable to pressure. Its own guidelines on offensive material state that "what we deem offensive is probably about what you would expect", which is almost as helpful as the famous US supreme court judgment nearly 50 years ago on hardcore pornography, "I know it when I see it". While such vagueness may give a wide latitude for freedom of expression, it also means that when there’s enough moral outrage, it may be difficult for Amazon to resist caving in.
    Clearer guidelines are needed to protect free speech online and that should include material that causes offence. Expecting virtual booksellers and publishers to operate as taste and decency police would introduce unaccountable censorship based on subjective criteria.
    The famous obscenity trials of the 60s and 70s were only in rare cases about protecting great literature—it was the right to freedom of expression that was at stake, whatever the quality of the content. Shortly before he died, the great writer and lawyer John Mortimer recalled his famous defence of the editors of Oz magazine in an interview for Index on Censorship. "We weren’t defending anything with any particular merit," Mortimer said. "We were defending a principle, I suppose, that you shouldn’t have any censorship, that nobody should tell you what to read or write. It’s entirely your own business. " He believed that it was a principle that, a generation later, had been undermined. The call for censorship and the expectation that online intermediaries police the internet are becoming regular demands. So it’s necessary to reassert that fundamental principle: the right to read anything we like.
Virtual booksellers present a threat to public morality because they______.
选项 A、profit from books on terror and violence
B、have lost reliable quality guardians
C、neglect works of classical literature
D、escape the supposed responsibility for book content
答案B
解析 第二段先指出虚拟书商对公共道德形成了新威胁，随后进行具体说明：以前我们能依靠出版商做出可靠的编辑决定。而现在人人都可以决定。换言之，虚拟书商失去了可靠的质量把关者，[B]选项正确。
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