by Steven-Elliot Altman (SG Member: Steven_Altman)

Our Fiction Friday serialized novel, The Killswitch Review, is a futuristic murder mystery with killer sociopolitical commentary (and some of the best sex scenes we’ve ever read!). Written by bestselling sci-fi author Steven-Elliot Altman (with Diane DeKelb-Rittenhouse), it offers a terrifying postmodern vision in the tradition of Blade Runner and Brave New World…

By the year 2156, stem cell therapy has triumphed over aging and disease, extending the human lifespan indefinitely. But only for those who have achieved Conscientious Citizen Status. To combat overpopulation, the U.S. has sealed its borders, instituted compulsory contraception and a strict one child per couple policy for those who are permitted to breed, and made technology-assisted suicide readily available. But in a world where the old can remain vital forever, America’s youth have little hope of prosperity.

Jason Haggerty is an investigator for Black Buttons Inc, the government agency responsible for dispensing personal handheld Kevorkian devices, which afford the only legal form of suicide. An armed “Killswitch” monitors and records a citizen’s final moments — up to the point where they press a button and peacefully die. Post-press review agents — “button collectors” — are dispatched to review and judge these final recordings to rule out foul play.

When three teens stage an illegal public suicide, Haggerty suspects their deaths may have been murders. Now his race is on to uncover proof and prevent a nationwide epidemic of copycat suicides. Trouble is, for the first time in history, an entire generation might just decide they’re better off dead.

(Catch up with the previous installments of Killswitch – see links below – then continue reading after the jump…)

[..]

by Andrew Shaffer

On February 18, PayPal contacted ebook distributor Smashwords with an ultimatum: Remove certain types of erotic ebooks (featuring underage characters, incest, bestiality, and rape), or face deactivation of their PayPal account. Since PayPal is integrated into the Smashwords website, they had no choice but to remove the “edgy” erotica identified by PayPal as “unlawful.” No U.S. court had ever found any of the ebooks in question illegal, but that was rather beside the point for PayPal, who seemed to be confusing illegal sexual activities with legal depictions of those activities.

What started as a dispute between a payment processor (PayPal) and a handful of ebook stores (including Smashwords) snowballed into a widely circulated petition from the Electronic Freedom Foundation (signed by the Authors Guild, the CBLDF, and the ACLU, among others) asking PayPal to reverse their policy.

“What I find chilling is that the money exchanger, not the merchant, can make such a decision,” commenter L.K. Rigel wrote on a Dear Author blog post, where news of PayPal’s actions was first reported. “PayPal is, after all, basically a bank. So now a bank gets to decide what customers can buy or merchants can sell? The decision is only palatable because they’re cutting off stuff people mostly find abhorrent.”

When PayPal allegedly tried to lay the blame on credit card companies’ terms of service, Visa flipped a finger right back. “Visa takes no position with respect to lawful goods and services bought and sold by the people and the companies who use our payment service,” Visa’s Investor Relations wrote in a letter to BannedWriters.com. “We want to clarify that Visa had no involvement with PayPal’s conclusion on this issue.”

After Visa clarified their position on credit card usage (“anything legal”), PayPal’s excuse (“the credit card companies are making us do this!”) fell apart and they had to admit defeat. On March 13, PayPal announced an updated policy with regards to handling ebook transactions that “will prohibit use of PayPal for the sale of e-books that contain child pornography, or e-books with text and obscene images of rape, bestiality or incest… In addition, the policy will be focused on individual books, not on entire ‘classes’ of books.”

PayPal’s policy change represented a win for online retailers as well as for freedom of expression “This is going to be a major victory for writers, readers and free speech,” said Smashwords’ Mark Coker.

Related Posts:

50 Shades of Grey: Whipping BDSM Out Of The Shadows

by Steven-Elliot Altman (SG Member: Steven_Altman)

Our Fiction Friday serialized novel, The Killswitch Review, is a futuristic murder mystery with killer sociopolitical commentary (and some of the best sex scenes we’ve ever read!). Written by bestselling sci-fi author Steven-Elliot Altman (with Diane DeKelb-Rittenhouse), it offers a terrifying postmodern vision in the tradition of Blade Runner and Brave New World…

By the year 2156, stem cell therapy has triumphed over aging and disease, extending the human lifespan indefinitely. But only for those who have achieved Conscientious Citizen Status. To combat overpopulation, the U.S. has sealed its borders, instituted compulsory contraception and a strict one child per couple policy for those who are permitted to breed, and made technology-assisted suicide readily available. But in a world where the old can remain vital forever, America’s youth have little hope of prosperity.

Jason Haggerty is an investigator for Black Buttons Inc, the government agency responsible for dispensing personal handheld Kevorkian devices, which afford the only legal form of suicide. An armed “Killswitch” monitors and records a citizen’s final moments — up to the point where they press a button and peacefully die. Post-press review agents — “button collectors” — are dispatched to review and judge these final recordings to rule out foul play.

When three teens stage an illegal public suicide, Haggerty suspects their deaths may have been murders. Now his race is on to uncover proof and prevent a nationwide epidemic of copycat suicides. Trouble is, for the first time in history, an entire generation might just decide they’re better off dead.

(Catch up with the previous installments of Killswitch – see links below – then continue reading after the jump…)

[..]

by Steven-Elliot Altman (SG Member: Steven_Altman)

Our Fiction Friday serialized novel, The Killswitch Review, is a futuristic murder mystery with killer sociopolitical commentary (and some of the best sex scenes we’ve ever read!). Written by bestselling sci-fi author Steven-Elliot Altman (with Diane DeKelb-Rittenhouse), it offers a terrifying postmodern vision in the tradition of Blade Runner and Brave New World…

By the year 2156, stem cell therapy has triumphed over aging and disease, extending the human lifespan indefinitely. But only for those who have achieved Conscientious Citizen Status. To combat overpopulation, the U.S. has sealed its borders, instituted compulsory contraception and a strict one child per couple policy for those who are permitted to breed, and made technology-assisted suicide readily available. But in a world where the old can remain vital forever, America’s youth have little hope of prosperity.

Jason Haggerty is an investigator for Black Buttons Inc, the government agency responsible for dispensing personal handheld Kevorkian devices, which afford the only legal form of suicide. An armed “Killswitch” monitors and records a citizen’s final moments — up to the point where they press a button and peacefully die. Post-press review agents — “button collectors” — are dispatched to review and judge these final recordings to rule out foul play.

When three teens stage an illegal public suicide, Haggerty suspects their deaths may have been murders. Now his race is on to uncover proof and prevent a nationwide epidemic of copycat suicides. Trouble is, for the first time in history, an entire generation might just decide they’re better off dead.

(Catch up with the previous installments of Killswitch – see links below – then continue reading after the jump…)

[..]

by Steven-Elliot Altman (SG Member: Steven_Altman)

Our Fiction Friday serialized novel, The Killswitch Review, is a futuristic murder mystery with killer sociopolitical commentary (and some of the best sex scenes we’ve ever read!). Written by bestselling sci-fi author Steven-Elliot Altman (with Diane DeKelb-Rittenhouse), it offers a terrifying postmodern vision in the tradition of Blade Runner and Brave New World…

By the year 2156, stem cell therapy has triumphed over aging and disease, extending the human lifespan indefinitely. But only for those who have achieved Conscientious Citizen Status. To combat overpopulation, the U.S. has sealed its borders, instituted compulsory contraception and a strict one child per couple policy for those who are permitted to breed, and made technology-assisted suicide readily available. But in a world where the old can remain vital forever, America’s youth have little hope of prosperity.

Jason Haggerty is an investigator for Black Buttons Inc, the government agency responsible for dispensing personal handheld Kevorkian devices, which afford the only legal form of suicide. An armed “Killswitch” monitors and records a citizen’s final moments — up to the point where they press a button and peacefully die. Post-press review agents — “button collectors” — are dispatched to review and judge these final recordings to rule out foul play.

When three teens stage an illegal public suicide, Haggerty suspects their deaths may have been murders. Now his race is on to uncover proof and prevent a nationwide epidemic of copycat suicides. Trouble is, for the first time in history, an entire generation might just decide they’re better off dead.

(Catch up with the previous installments of Killswitch – see links below – then continue reading after the jump…)

[..]

by Blogbot

This Sunday (Feb 19) we’re having a women’s writers’ retreat in the SG Radio Studio. Hosts Nicole Powers (SG’s Managing Editor) and Darrah de jour (SG’s resident post-feminist sex and sensuality expert) will be joined in studio by Love Junkie author and Writers on Fire coach Rachel Resnick and her frenemy, actress, comedian, playwright and author Lauren Weedman, a.k.a. Horny Patty (we’re told by Rachel that she had that nickname prior to her “cameo” in HBO’s Hung!). The two met online on a UCLA Book Proposal Writing course, and have been unhealthily competitive ever since. We therefore expect the claws to be out and the sparks to fly, so it should be a fun show.

When Darrah’s not steering the conversation towards the topic of porn or polyamory, and Nicole’s not banging on about Occupy, ACTA or the freakin’ NDAA, we’ll be more or less on topic, yakking about writing. That’s right. Writing. Like, books ‘n’ shit. Stories. Sketches. Plays. Real writing. Surreal writing. Automatic writing. Manual writing. And ghost writing. Since doing this shit is hard. Very hard. Like if you’re JK Rowling rich, fuck it, you should just pay someone else to do it and go get your nails done. Really. But if you’re not, and you’re embarrassed to let people even read your diary – not because it’s too juicy or cringe-worthy, but because it’s too dull – tune in to find out how to make boring shit sound fun, shameless stuff shameful (in a good way), and how to plain just make cool, uncool, and awesomely wrong stuff up.

Tune in to the world’s leading naked radio show for two hours of totally awesome tunes and extreme conversation – and don’t let yo momma listen in!

Listen to SG Radio live Sunday night from 10 PM til Midnight on suicidegirlsradio.indie1031.com/

Got questions? Then dial our studio hotline digits this Sunday between 10 PM and midnight PST: 323-900-6012

And follow us on Twitter because we like cyberstalkers.

[..]

by Steven-Elliot Altman (SG Member: Steven_Altman)

Our Fiction Friday serialized novel, The Killswitch Review, is a futuristic murder mystery with killer sociopolitical commentary (and some of the best sex scenes we’ve ever read!). Written by bestselling sci-fi author Steven-Elliot Altman (with Diane DeKelb-Rittenhouse), it offers a terrifying postmodern vision in the tradition of Blade Runner and Brave New World…

By the year 2156, stem cell therapy has triumphed over aging and disease, extending the human lifespan indefinitely. But only for those who have achieved Conscientious Citizen Status. To combat overpopulation, the U.S. has sealed its borders, instituted compulsory contraception and a strict one child per couple policy for those who are permitted to breed, and made technology-assisted suicide readily available. But in a world where the old can remain vital forever, America’s youth have little hope of prosperity.

Jason Haggerty is an investigator for Black Buttons Inc, the government agency responsible for dispensing personal handheld Kevorkian devices, which afford the only legal form of suicide. An armed “Killswitch” monitors and records a citizen’s final moments — up to the point where they press a button and peacefully die. Post-press review agents — “button collectors” — are dispatched to review and judge these final recordings to rule out foul play.

When three teens stage an illegal public suicide, Haggerty suspects their deaths may have been murders. Now his race is on to uncover proof and prevent a nationwide epidemic of copycat suicides. Trouble is, for the first time in history, an entire generation might just decide they’re better off dead.

(Catch up with the previous installments of Killswitch – see links below – then continue reading after the jump…)

[..]