Amazon "gay ban" might have been hacker's work

 by Nick Farrell

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.