PayPal Revises Policies to Allow Legal Fiction_Posted by Mark Coker (by erotica writers and such, curtailing their mercantile censorship)

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

In a victory for free speech, PayPal today announced plans to revise their content policies to allow Smashwords writers full freedom to publish and sell legal ebooks.

I met with PayPal at their offices yesterday in San Jose. They outlined their proposed policy changes for me. I was impressed.

This is a victory for all writers and readers. It removes credit card companies, banks and payment processors from the business of censoring legal fiction. It creates a new precedent that should allow other payment processors who have previously discriminated against legal fiction to relax their policies.

It will make more fiction more available to more readers. It gives writers greater freedom to express themselves. It gives readers more freedom to decide what they want to experience in the privacy of their own imagination.

If you haven't followed the Paypal censorship saga, you can see how the campaign developed by reading my email dispatches to Smashwords authors, publishers and customers. They're archived in the Smashwords Press Room (see PayPal #1, #2, #3, #4, #5).

When I received the first email from PayPal February 18 with the ultimatum to remove certain erotica content or face loss of PayPal services at Smashwords, my first inclination was to try to limit the damage so we could protect mainstream erotica from further censorship incursion. Thanks to the outpouring of opposition to these policies, I saw an opportunity to make PayPal our partner in a greater campaign to protect all legal fiction from censorship.

Credit for this breakthrough goes to the indie author community who made phone calls, wrote letters and emails, blogged and tweeted; bloggers who raised visibility of the issue; advocacy groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) and the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) who were the first to stand up for our authors; mainstream media who raised visibility of the story to greater levels; and last but not least, PayPal. PayPal worked with us in the spirit of partnership to understand the issues, understand Smashwords and how we represent a new model for publishing outside the traditional gatekeeping system, and to understand that fiction is fiction and literary merit should be determined by readers.

I'm sending out an email today to all Smashwords authors and publishers with more details and thanks. An archived version is in the Smashwords press room here._Posted by Mark Coker

"We writers are masturbationists..."

"We writers are masturbationists. We need plenty of quality time alone.

"And when it feels good to us, it should feel good to a reader when they are alone or sharing our story [made from love] with a loved one."

_Neale Sourna
09-20-2011

The Mummy (3): Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

This is simple storywise, in "The Mummy (3): Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" things aren't bad at all, and although I love Maria Bello I miss you know who, and perhaps Kate Beckinsale, if avail. would have made a little more sense there.

What's first wrong, though, is that "Alex" has an American accent. How'd that happen? And, it wasn't necessary to try and top Brendan Fraser by casting a even more huge guy as his son. The guy is not Fraser, whenever Fraser is near, you go, "Oh, I get it. Fraser, STAR! And other guy, who got a good acting gig, with which TOO MUCH SCREEN TIME." Yes, he kind of makes the screen dreary, nothing personal but dry. Wrong part, wrong guy, something.

Just think what James McAvoy of "Wanted" would have done with the part, the time period, and the fun of playing off his being small and dark as mom, and with a UK accent, but tough as she AND dad. The mind boggles.

Second and most important wrong.

The original and the second Stephen Sommers outing had two parallel love stories, both strong, one always flawed. We don't have that in M3. Alex and his two thousand year old girlfriend don't have the chemistry or solid writing/performing that the first two films had.

The girlfriend's mom and dad do, but were woefully underused in that regard. They have instant chemistry in stills, let alone on screen; Russell Wong and Michelle Yeoh are hot together and have the power of being a couple that the Egyptian mummies/reencarnation couple of films one and two had, and of Fraser and his paramour as well.

Time should've been taken from Fraser Jr and given to the Chinese to strengthen the father-mother-daughter story there, and the second triangle of general-sorceress-emperor. Think of what was missed when the general wasn't given the chance to attempt to pay back his former friend and cut him off from immortality, as any good general, let alone an excellent one who'd delivered so much into the emperors hands thousands of years previously, yet lost it all for love.

Where was our chance to see his concern for his still living family, to perhaps try to save the mother of his child, the woman he'd already died for, been torn apart for? Given to a boring white boy, whose stunts weren't the same as his father Rick's from the first two movies, where Rick'd risk all to protect Evie and his family/friends, not just to do stunts.

Think of what the two single shots would have been if made into a two shot of the reanimated general and his still live daughter, showing them together for the first time seeing each other and reaching for each other, as time and the winds of broken magic blow him away from her, now fully orphaned, after more than two thousand years?

It was so obvious, and yet not done. What is the point of hiring such fine actors and underutilizing them, especially the ones of color, while wasting their screen time and our deeply moving-won't-slow-the-action-give-me-the-deep-emotions-too-don't-you-remember-we-killed-and-resurrected-Evie in the middle of the last film and didn't miss a step?

No, they forgot or didn't watch it, evidently.

--Neale Sourna
writer, author, screenwriter, novelist