An open letter to PayPal

Dear PayPal representative,

As of right now - February 26, 2012 5:02 PM EST, the following products are available via your parent company eBay. They feature some or all of the following: rape, molestation, sex with minor, gay sex, teenage sex, polygamy, marital infidelity and other acts you declared objectionable during the recent change in Terms of Service with Smashwords:

- "The Tudors" - TV series on DVD (34 results)
- "Rome" - TV series on DVD (49 results)
- "Mad Men" - TV series on DVD (24 results)
- "Lolita" - Stanley Kubrick's movie
- "Quills" - historic fiction about Marquis de Sade (20 results)
- A horror section with over 86,000 selections, no doubt including everyone from Jack the Ripper to Son of Sam.
- 3, 693 results when searching for "erotica", including such titles as "Best Fetish Erotica" and "Alternative Treatment - best M/M erotica"
- Numerous vibrators, sex toys, fetish costumes and accessories.
- 200 results for "Marquis de Sade" in books.
- 407 results for "Anais Nin" in books.
- 618 results for "Henry Miller" in books.

I could keep going, but I think you get the picture. If you are so proper and wish to advocate YOUR definition of what is appropriate or not appropriate to buy and sell, you will have to pull all of these products, as well as works by Emile Zola, Guy de Maupassant, Georges Sand, Bulgakov, Yefremov, Solzhenitsyn, Hemingway, Coleridge, Shakespeare, Salinger, Orwell and many, many, many others. And, oh yes, the Bible, which, as I am certain you are aware, includes incest, rape, molestation, sex with the minor and slaughter of infants. You will also have to bar all photographers and graphic artists who sell erotic art. Of course, pulling all those materials and barring all those sellers from eBay would mean letting go of a HUGE share of the market that has anything to do with sex.

Or, you could reverse look up the definition and the difference between fictional sexual violence and real-life sexual violence (and the studies regarding interactions between the two, of which they are many, most agreeing that fictional sexual content has very little impact on what people do in real life), reverse your Smashwords decision and leave the authors alone. As is, you are begging for a class action lawsuit.

Respectfully,
Maria K.