Illegal Books (in the US)
 

Are there any books that are illegal to be sold or published in the US?

I know the US government passed a law preventing the sale of books that describe how to make bombs, but Amazon still carries them. Are there any laws about hate propaganda like they have up in Canada?

Not that I am aware of to be honest with you.

I don't think so. Maybe some types of pornography.

Yes with some type of pornography (Child, Beasity, etc)

Other than that, who cares about buying books on how to make bombs because you can find that resource on the internet, in fact, you can find out anything you want, banned or not. It's kinda pointless to try to ban some type of information in this age of information

My understanding is that there are no illegal books, but possession of some books with out a good reason is illegal. For example, to posses a book about making pipe bombs would be illegal for most people, except for someone on the bomb squad or some one with a good reason like that. Just like carrying switch blades in California is illegal for most people, switch blades are not illegal, just illegal for most to carry them. It is illegal to carry the content if you are not authorized to carry it.

My understanding meshes with Dilbert's. If caught owning a book that you shouldn't possess (such as how to make bombs or certain types of pornography), then you can get into some legal problems, but in general, there's not really any censorship. For the most part, it'd be hard to find a publisher to even print some of the stuff that is more risque anyway...

I think the First Amendment covers most of this.

Freedom of speech/press means you can say or print it even if the rest of us don't like it*. It should stay that way.

* - unless it's harmful to others (slander, libel, inciting violence)

So the anarchist cookbook is now illegal?

I could be wrong...but I thought that it had been, for some time now. :confused:

Although I'm a staunch opponent of censorship, and book banning, The Anarchist's Cookbook has always arched my eyebrows a bit. There's always something that tests the resolve, isn't there?

Still legal, although it will raise some law enforcement eyebrows.

I know that if you check out Mein Kompf at the library, you get put on a watch list...

It's Mein Kampf, w/an a. I'm glad I own a copy (keeps me off that list). As far as new (to be published) books go, editors will not approve what cannot be sold. As far as what's out there, check the annual book-burning list. Many people want books burned; fortunately they are turned down. THANK-YOU K. VONNEGUTT, JR!

I highly doubt that.

Mein Kampf is a poorly written piece of political propaganda. Occasionally it pops up as required reading for political science classes dealing with propaganda, but it's not worth a watch list, and I could turn up no legitimate news source or academic source suggesting such a thing.

All the teachers at my school are reading The Talent Code, by Daniel Coyle. It's about how skill grows in the brain, and how to get more of it -- super-interesting, and useful. There's some great stuff about what successful schools do to motivate students, too.

And it'll raise your eyebrows right off your face if you use the formulas in it. Copy I saw had faulty "recipes" and unnecessarily dangerous procedures.

/army demo guy rant

Why? Gonna ban army manuals, too? Don't take away my 5-34, Ranger and Sapper Leader Handbooks, Bill!

'Sides, books? Just text and text never hurt anybody. Blaming books for something people do is silly: people would do stupid things anyway.

Reminds me of something I heard several years ago about somebody trying to ban Catcher in the Rye and other classics.

You're just trying to keep the little guy down. I'm gonna go smoke some bananadine and make light bulb bombs to stick it to people like you.

Tropic of Cancer was banned in the states until the 60's I think...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropic_of_Cancer_(novel)

Yup.

I had a middle schooler tell me a couple months ago that he thought The Communist Manifesto was banned.

I chuckled and pulled a copy out of my notebook, as I had to read it for the fifth time since coming to university for my sociology class last term. He was thrilled, and I was pleased to be able to introduce him to Marx.

Socialist!

Engels actually wrote pretty much all of the communist manifesto ;)

As a library worker, I can say that as far as I've been told we don't even have a way of keeping that information in our system, just so that people can't be tracked.

And considering I attended a materials-acquisition workshop just yesterday where our policies on intellectual freedom and proceedures for taking complaints (I'm honestly surprised it didn't include "Step Two: Throw in Recycle Bin") were discussed at almost unberable length, I'm taking their word for it :lol:

you know, i've heard that from a few different people. First time i heard of this i was in Texas. i wonder if there is any truth to this.

i read somewhere that the way marx & engels would work was that marx would choose all the consonants and engels all the vowels.

on the topic at hand, i think at some point the Man figured out that banning books outright was a form of free advertising. better to engage in repressive tolerance. you know, like marcuse talked about in the one-dimensional man: the system deals with dissent by accepting it's premises. much more efficient.

Sure is. Be careful or you might end up in a FEMA death camp.

Engels was a lot better writer than Marx in terms of style and certainly was better at writing a popular pamphlett. It was an interesting relationship: Marx, who alienated and fell out with just about everyone in his life, probably could count Engels as his only real friend. Engels is the only person Marx ever apologised to (after they fell out when Marx made a flippant remark about the death of a woman Engels cared about)

I agree that some books SHOULD be banned.

An instruction book for making an atomic bomb should be banned.

A disgusting book of child pornography should be banned.

Books inciting hatrid against one segment of society in a very blatant way should be banned.

But banning literature isnt something that can be done lightly - I would only recomend criminalising the most disgusting filth or very dangerous material.

I've heard that this happened during the McCarthy era. There was a list of subversive documents, which included the Declaration of Independence.

By banning child porn, you are working to stop abuse, because consumption of a commodity implicitly condones its production. Sexually abusing children is objectively harmful psychologically if not physically, and child porn is evidence of abuse. As far as considering something dangerous when it does not explicitly harm someone, you are treading down a slippery slope that allows any future government to decide what is acceptable speech. In banning hate literature, you also force this type of thinking underground where it cannot so easily be combated and educated against.

Yes, there's always that argument - like with the KKK, giving them publicity usually simply heap humiation on them as they are shown up as the pathetic losers they are. But there always has to be the possibility to ban the worst kind of things (like those lunatics who call young, disenfranchised Muslim kids to violence and hatrid) of incitement. But it does create another problem, or at least give another dimension to it: "Qui Custodiet Ipso Custodies?" (or for us comic book fans: "who watches the watchmen?")... every power the state must use to protect us can equally be used to harm us.

My wife works in the local library. This gave her a chuckle.

So, I have it on authority that this does not happen in my local Texas library.

I think we can draw the line at incitement to violence, but that is an issue separate from speech itself. I tend to err far to the side of caution on this because I'm afraid of the consequences when the pendulum swings back.

ha, alright then. i hate getting bad information. thats what i get for listening to a guy with a rat tail and 50 hello kitty accessories on his persons.

I think only stuff that is classified for national security reasons or considered to be munitions can be banned from publication. Otherwise the First Amendment provides pretty much complete protection. And even the first category is kinda iffy, short of actual troop movements or things like that.