Η ανακοίνωση της Amazon.com για το πρόβλημα που δημιουργήθηκε

Ευχαριστώ την φίλη Στάσσα για την ενημέρωση σχετικά με την ανακοίνωση της Amazon.com για το πρόβλημα που δημιουργήθηκε όταν σχεδόν όλα τα βιβλία λοαδ θεματολογίας μεταφέρθηκαν στην κατηγορία "adult".

Η ανακοίνωση έχει ως εξής:
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"This is an embarrassing and hamfisted cataloguing error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection. It has been misreported that the issue was limited to gay and lesbian themed titles.

"In fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as health, mind and body, reproductive and sexual medicine, and erotica. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon's main product search.

"Many books have now been fixed and we're in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future."
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Θα πρέπει να πούμε βέβαια, ότι υπήρξε κινητοποίηση αρκετών ανθρώπων σ' αυτό το θέμα και ότι διαδικτυακά, μέσα σε μια μέρα μαζεύτηκαν 23.003 υπογραφές (και αυξάνονται), εδώ καθώς και εστάλησαν πολλές επιστολές διαμαρτυρίας (πολλές από λοαδ συγγραφείς) προς την Amazon και κάποιοι απείλησαν με μποϋκοτάζ.

Επίσης, ενδιαφέρον έχει και η ανακοίνωση που έβγαλε χθες το Ίδρυμα Lambda Literary Foundation και την οποία αντιγράφω:
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Lambda Literary Responds to Amazon.com

April 13, 2009--During Easter weekend, Lambda Literary began receiving a stream of emails from LGBT writers who were concerned about a new ranking system at Amazon.com. Books by these writers had been "de-ranked" by Amazon, making them ineligible for the bestseller lists and other seach functions. The new system seemed to affect LGBT books more than any other category of books.

According to Publishers Weekly, one author, Mark Probst, "contacted a customer service representative at Amazon and wrote about the exchange on his blog. Probst wrote that the Amazon rep responded to his inquiry by saying that 'adult' material is being excluded from appearing in 'some searches and best seller lists' as a 'consideration of our entire customer base.' Whatever the cause, titles like James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room and Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain are among the those that have lost their sales ranking."

In response to Amazon's technological "glitch" and its effect on LGBT books, Board President Christopher Rice has released this statement:

"Lambda Literary Foundation applauds the diligent work of writers, bloggers and activists in calling attention to this deeply distressing turn of events. I have seen my first novel stripped of its sale ranking by this apparent computer glitch so I join other writers who are baffled to the point of anger. I take great solace in the quick mobilization of our community in response to this apparent marginalization of LGBT books; the grassroots power of the Internet has been placed on glorious display for all to see. Over the next few days, we at Lambda Literary will be monitoring the situation very closely. Amazon is one of our nation's largest general book retailers. In their commitment to creating and sustaining technological advances in the publishing industry, they have laid claim to the future of book distribution. As such, they have a pressing responsibility to create an unfettered exchange of stories and ideas. If a quick and decisive response to this problem is not forthcoming within the next few days, we at Lambda Literary look forward to leading a sustained and impassioned dialogue on this issue, which will seek to harness the energies that have been released by our community's admirable response."

Lambda Literary will post updates to this developing story on its home page at http://www.lambdaliterary.org.
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Τέλος, παραθέτω το βίντεο από το ρεπορτάζ του Channel4, από το pinknews: