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Bad enough any publisher wants to alter classics of literature, but forcing these censorship efforts on customers is very dark.

The case of the move to alter and homogenize classic literary novels is roundly disturbing. Let’s be frank and call it what it is – censorship. This is the latest example of a disturbing shift in an industry that has long preserved our freedom of expression. Publishing has long been the sanctuary of our liberties in this regard. There is a reason “book burning” is often used as a pejorative charge in these kinds of discussions.

Tragically, we have moved into an era where publishers have relinquished this once rock-ribbed position. The gatekeepers of the cherished right to free speech have shown they are nowadays more than willing to not only permit the actions long held to be abhorrent in their industry but to engage in those troubling acts. I covered recently how a New York Times book editor displayed how examples of the silencing of voices and self-censorship have been creeping into the publishing houses in recent years.

It made splashy news when it was announced that Puffin Books — an imprint of Penguin-Random House – was going through the collected works of famed author Roald Dahl and altering language that would be deemed offensive by today’s tender social activist standards. As Bob Hoge revealed earlier, the individual behind these censorial edits is a multi-checkbox diversity hire who ran the literature through a woke filter.

The chief censor of the great children’s author Roald Dahl has now been revealed, and it’s Jo Ross-Barrett, a person with they/them pronouns who describes themselves as a ‘”non-binary, asexual, polyamorous relationship anarchist who is on the autism spectrum.”

Thankfully, and justifiably, the reaction to this move was met with very loud pushback from the public, to the extent the publisher relented on the decision – sort of. It was later announced that Penguin would provide what they call “classic editions” of Dahl’s canon of work, which is to say, the original unadulterated versions. But there is another angle to this that takes the disturbing moves by the publisher and launches those up to the Orwellian Strata of censorship.

Owners of Roald Dahl ebooks are having their libraries automatically updated with the new censored versions containing hundreds of changes to language related to weight, mental health, violence, gender and race https://t.co/xTQuWsnICq

— The Times and The Sunday Times (@thetimes) February 25, 2023

People who had purchased the novels of Dahl’s works on e-readers — such as Amazon’s Kindle, or Barnes & Knoble’s Nook — discovered that these edits to the books were made in their digital copies. Books purchased years ago, well ahead of this decision, had been altered automatically, without any announcement being made.

The explanation from publishers regarding digital book copies is that you do not own the content in the same fashion as if you bought a physical copy of a book. When you make these “purchases” what you actually are paying is a licensing fee to access the content. You do not pay the price to have the full book sent permanently to your device. This means, as an example, if you buy an ebook from a merchant that later goes out of business you will lose access to the purchased work.

What makes this particularly bothersome is that this takes place without permission from nor notification of the consumer. This flexibility with ebooks is double-edged. There could be times when updates or expanded versions could come along and enhance the product. Frequently, when a book moves to a paperback edition, expanded content is included, or maybe a nonfiction work could include some new information that transpired since the original publication.

But these are positives for a consumer and there is also the chance to give the purchaser the opportunity to update their edition, if they so choose. But for a publisher to go in and make these edits without asking, and without notice, is a disturbing turn. It is yet another example of how publishing has made some very problematic shifts, as well as showing how more components within our culture have become far too comfortable with the concept of censorship. To see this playing out in one of the historical bastions of free expression is particularly troubling.