An app that blanks out swear words in e-books hasn't gone down well among writers including Chocolat author Joanne Harris, who have explained that the app is censoring their work without permission.
The app operates on a sliding scale from
clean , which removes only the strongest swear words, to squeaky clean which even takes out damn .
Harris wrote a scathing critique of the Clean Reader application which has been designed to help parents shield their
children from strong language. Condemning the app on her blog, in a post titled why I'm saying "fuck you" to Clean Reader , Harris likened the programme to examples of suppression from history. She said:
Anyone who works with words understands their power. Words, if used correctly, can achieve almost anything. To tamper with what is written -- however much we may dislike certain words and phrases -- is to embrace censorship. We've
been down this road before. We should know where it leads by now. It starts with blanking out a few words. It goes on to drape table legs and stick fig leaves onto statues. It progresses to denouncing gay or Jewish artists as "degenerate". It
ends with burning libraries and erasing whole civilizations from history.
Apps like Clean Reader change the text without the author's permission. They take the author's words and replace them -- sometimes very clumsily -- on the
basis of some perceived idea of "bad words" versus "good words". No permission is sought, or granted. There is no opt-out clause for authors or publishers.
Laurie Penny, a journalist and author, added: There's
now an app for taking the swearwords out of books. I find this fucking horrifying .
Charlie Stross, a science fiction writer wrote on Twitter: This - from an author's point of view - is an obscenity: algorithmic censorship of ebooks.
Update: How the app works
29th March 2015. See article from freethinker.co.uk
How it works is that you load your ebook into the app via iTunes; you can then select one of three filter levels, from
mild censorship to the full monty; and the app does a find-and-replace using a database of "offensive" words selected by the Maughans, replacing them with "clean" versions.
For instance, body parts in the genital region of
women are all turned into "bottom"; "fuck" becomes "freak"; "breast" becomes "chest", "whore" becomes "hussy"; and "bitch" becomes "witch" (which could get somewhat
confusing if the book actually discusses dogs). "Sex" is changed to "love", "penis" to "groin" and "blowjob" to "pleasure". (See a fuller list
here ).
