arcosapphire t1_iu68no2 wrote on October 28, 2022 at 9:25 PM

Reply to comment by vegainthemirror in TIL that Fahrenheit 451, a book about a distopian future where books are banned and burned, was banned and burned by the apartheid regime in South Africa with other tens of thousands. by open_closet

What? Back around 2000, my mom got me a copy, I assume from B&N. It certainly wasn't banned.

I feel obligated to add a disclaimer: my mom is Jewish and it was for educational reasons to understand history. That said, I couldn't make it more than a couple of pages in. I was expecting some intelligent but misguided philosophy that I could eruditely analyze and go, "aha, here was where he went wrong" and pat myself on the back. Instead it's a bunch of immediately blathering nonsense. Which is educational in a different way, relevant to note recent events this very article is tangentially related to, that such nonsense can actually get people politically pumped. But I don't think more than a couple of pages would have been necessary to learn that anyway.

vegainthemirror t1_iu696lh wrote on October 28, 2022 at 9:29 PM

Depends where. In german-speaking countries, it was banned, difdicult if not impossible to obtain it, physically and digitally. I know of a history teacher at my high school who somehow was able to get a copy from somewhere, but we've never seen it, let alone read from it.

arcosapphire t1_iu6acyp wrote on October 28, 2022 at 9:37 PM

Yeah, it was rather famously censored in Germany. But I don't think there was any restriction in the US, certainly not something about publishing rights and public domain. The 70 year copyright thing is also country-specific and thus couldn't explain it being somehow unattainable anywhere. Which it wasn't.