• hendrik@palaver.p3x.de
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    15 days ago

    Some banana republic? Or a country like Switzerland that’s probably missing from the list, but not because there aren’t any banned books?

    • vaionko@sopuli.xyz
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      15 days ago

      You really think it’s common for free countries to ban books. I’m pretty sure my country of Finland (not "some banana republic) does not have any banned books.

    • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.world
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      15 days ago

      Not a banana republic. And we simply don’t ban books. Like, some might be banned implicitly because of illegal content, for example a child porn book wouldn’t really fly here, but that’s because of the content, book itself wouldn’t be banned, you would just go to prison for sharing child pornography. I assume I could find other illegal content that would result in an implicit ban.

      But there’s no government body that even can create a list of books that should be banned. Hopefully it stays that way.

      • hendrik@palaver.p3x.de
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        15 days ago

        You’re right. Looking at the list again, there are a lot of countries missing. Like Finland, which vaionko mentioned and several others from all kinds of continents. But I think what you said also applies to a lot of other democratic and free countries in the list. For example if I look at the list of Germany, where I’m from… That mainly lists books that include holocaust denial (which is a crime here, due to history) or other misinformation concerning that. And instructional books on how to build bombs or poison someone. So it’s not like our courts are banning books without a proper reason, either. And I think it mainly concerns distributing and selling those books. Owning them is fine, with more or less the one exception of child pornography.

        And it’s not the government’s job to ban books here, either. These are some individual(?) court rulings.

        But with that said, my country isn’t at the top of freedom of speech. I think we’re cutting down on libel and defamation more than some other countries. And sometimes an author or publisher gets sued for publishing a book containing doxxing or lots of personal information abot celebrities/polititians without their consent. And then that’s effectively banned from being distributed.