No one is sure whether to
believe him
It all seemed plausible. In the interests of protecting
good Christians in the US, Amazon refused to list every gay book on its
website.
However a hacker, called Weev, said that Amazon had nothing to do
with it and it was just a game that him and his friends dreamed up. Weev
claimed that he organised an army of off-shore computer users to make a bunch of
fake Amazon accounts and flag all the gay and lesbian books they could as
inappropriate.
He also embedded an iframe code that made their visitors
automatically send the inappropriate flags without their knowledge. While it
is all possible, there is no way that anyone an prove that Weev did it, Amazon
appears to have deactivated all the ways he used to ply his prank.
A former
Amazon employee has blamed France for the problems. Mike Daisey, the monologist
and former employee at Amazon.com, told the Seattle PI that someone in France
confused the term "adult", which refers to porn stuff in Amazon's system, with
"erotic" and "sexuality."
Amazon still has yet to make a specific comment.
The online retailer was tightening up its listings but did not seem to want to
spark a book burning riot.