Mike Sterling on "Progressive Ruin" describes how eBay cancelled six out his 23 auctions of underground comics due to the books being, in eBay's estimation, inappropriate outside of their Mature Audiences section.
Here is a list of the targeted books:
Armageddon #2 & #3
Adventures of the Little Green Dinosaur #1 & #2
Clowns by Dave Geiser
Edward's Heave
Sterling was not so much annoyed because of eBay's "Mature Audiences" policy, as what he feels is the inconsistent policing of this area:
"At any rate, I was pretty annoyed, particularly since there are plenty of other comic book auctions going on right now that are far worse than anything I listed. For example, a search on eBay reveals listings for the underground comic The Life and Loves of Cleopatra, one of the most sexually explicit undergrounds ever published. And I found several listings for Barry Blair's naughty book Leather & Lace, Tim Vigil's porn-gore book Faust, a boatload of Verotik books, and...hell, just type in "nude" in eBay's search box and see what pops up...er, so to speak. And, c'mon, Crying Freeman? We used to half-jokingly call this "Naked People Stabbing Each Other Monthly.""
Now, I never knew eBay had such a policy and was cancelling auctions. Are these auctions being cancelled because of viewer complaints? Does eBay have someone look through the listings and determine -- either by prior comic knowledge or by "sight" -- which books to cancel?
And is this defacto censorship?
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