PayPal backtracks on disputed ‘obscene’ e-book policy

Online payment service PayPal have backtracked on a policy against processing sales of e-books containing themes of rape, bestiality or incest. Protests from authors and anti-censorship activist groups, including Index on Censorship, led to a revision of their policy, which will now focus on e-books that contain potentially illegal images, not e-books that are limited to just text. Spokesman Anuj Nayar said the service will still refuse to process payments for text-only e-books containing child pornography themes. Nayar added that the revised policy will focus on individual books, rather than entire classes of books.