ASU2003

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?

Lady Sage

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

__________________
If only closed minds came with closed mouths.
Minds are like parachutes, they function best when open.
It`s Easier to Change a Condom Than a Diaper
Yes, the rumors are true... I actually AM a Witch.

Gatorade Frost

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

__________________
I got in a fight one time with a really big guy, and he said, "I'm going to mop the floor with your face." I said, "You'll be sorry." He said, "Oh, yeah? Why?" I said, "Well, you won't be able to get into the corners very well."
Emo Philips

feelgood

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

__________________
Looking out the window, that's an act of war. Staring at my shoes, that's an act of war. Committing an act of war? Oh you better believe that's an act of war

Dilbert1234567

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.

__________________
Donate Blood!

"Love is not finding the perfect person, but learning to see an imperfect person perfectly." -Sam Keen

MissTiger

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...

thingstodo

I think the First Amendment covers most of this.

__________________
If you're wringing your hands you can't roll up your shirt sleeves.

Stangers have the best candy.

MSD

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)

Sun Tzu

So the anarchist cookbook is now illegal?

__________________
To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.- Stephen Hawking

Bill O'Rights

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

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?

__________________
"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B. Anthony

"Hedonism with rules isn't hedonism at all, it's the Republican party." - JumpinJesus

It is indisputable that true beauty lies within...but a nice rack sure doesn't hurt.

MSD

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

sadistikdreams

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

william

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!

snowy

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.

__________________
If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Michaljone

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.

Plan9

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.

__________________
Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

MSD

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.

tisonlyi

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 do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place." - Winston Churchill, 1937 --{ORLY?}--

snowy

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.

__________________
If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Willravel

Socialist!

Strange Famous

Engels actually wrote pretty much all of the communist manifesto

__________________
"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."

The Gospel of Thomas

djtestudo

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

__________________
"Final thought: I just rented Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine. Frankly, it was the worst sports movie I've ever seen."
--Peter Schmuck, The (Baltimore) Sun

SSJTWIZTA

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.

__________________
First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the communists and I did not speak out because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for me And there was no one left to speak out for me.
-Pastor Martin Niemoller

roachboy

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.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

MSD

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

Strange Famous

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.

__________________
"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."

The Gospel of Thomas

inBOIL

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

__________________
And you believe Bush and the liberals and divorced parents and gays and blacks and the Christian right and fossil fuels and Xbox are all to blame, meanwhile you yourselves create an ad where your kid hits you in the head with a baseball and you don't understand the message that the problem is you.

MSD

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.

Strange Famous

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.

__________________
"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."

The Gospel of Thomas

Aladdin Sane

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.

__________________
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

MSD

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.

SSJTWIZTA

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.

__________________
First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the communists and I did not speak out because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for me And there was no one left to speak out for me.
-Pastor Martin Niemoller

loquitur

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.