digitaldiscipline ◾ ◾ Quick thing on Amazon

Private companies are allowed to suppress stuff.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/censorship

Please put the First Amendment down before you hurt yourselves.

This is just like private citizens can decree that stuff is off-limits in their house, writ large.

It's stupid and unfortunate (and, hopefully, accidental), but it's not censorship.

Note: I'm not suggesting that I think what happened over the weekend is good (in fact, I can understand why a lot of people are very, very unhappy about it); however, Amazon, or any other company, are completely within their rights to do something like this. Obviously, it comes at a huge cost in terms of public opinion, but that's a business decision completely separate from any sort of discussion over the moral or social impact of it, beyond how it impacts the bottom line.