PayPal Forced to Relent, Accept Payments on Porny eBooks Like ‘Fifty Shades of Gray’

PayPal is a notoriously unwieldy, unpleasant and borderline unethical company to deal with if you listen to the internet hordes, and one of the ways in which it manages to irk web citizens is by halting the sales of objects or other products it deems are unethical.

PayPal has been at the center of many disputes in which a product or other high-interest activity on the site was halted in its tracks for what appeared to be arbitrary reasons, such as the controversy around Christmas involving a charity drive for the site Regretsy. Due to Regretsy’s reach and involved user base, the decision was reversed, but it is likely if it happened to Joe Etailer, the funds could still be frozen.

But one area of arbitrary financial havoc PayPal reserved the right to wreak on users (who don’t really have very many options outside the money transfer company on the web) was removed this week, as the company reversed a policy it held on certain types of objectionable material. Erotic eBooks have come to the forefront in recent weeks, with the massive success of the erotic eBook Fifty Shades of Gray making news as it spreads virally through housewives across the US.

In a recent blog post, PayPal’s Director of Communications Anuj Nayar clarified the payment processing service’s position on potentially obscene comment, saying:

” …the policy will be focused on individual books, not on entire “classes” of books. Instead of demanding that e-book publishers remove all books in a category, we will provide notice to the seller of the specific e-books, if any, that we believe violate our policy.”

Nayar continues, saying that PayPal will also eventually allow those who have had content removed to resolve the issue, but did not elaborate on how such a process might shake out:

“We are working with e-book publishers on a process that will provide any affected site operator or author the opportunity to respond to and challenge a notice that an e-book violates the policy.”

As the news spread, Smashwords founder Mark Coker said that the revision in policy represented a massive win for independent writers and publishers, commenting:

“This is going to be a major victory for writers, readers and free speech. They are going to build a protective moat around legal fiction.”

Do you think companies like PayPal should interfere in legal transactions between consenting adults?