Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
An app has been created to blank out swear words in e-books which its makers believe will be particularly popular in conservative Arab states and with expat parents keen to protect their children from explicit content.
The move, however, has prompted outrage among writers including Chocolat author Joanne Harris, who have accused the Clean Reader application of censoring work without permission.
It operates on a sliding scale from ‘clean’, which removes only the worst swear words, to ‘squeaky clean’ which even takes out ‘damn’.
Condemning the app on her blog, in a post titled: ‘why I’m saying ‘f*** you’ to Clean Reader’, Mrs Harris, whose book was turned into a Hollywood film starring Juliette Binoche, 51, and Johnny Depp, 51, likened the programme to examples of suppression from history.
She said: “Anyone who works with words understands their power. Words, if used correctly, can achieve almost anything. To tamper with what is written – however much we may dislike certain words and phrases – is to embrace censorship.
“We’ve been down this road before. We should know where it leads by now. It starts with blanking out a few words. It goes on to drape table legs and stick fig leaves onto statues. It ends with burning libraries and erasing whole civilisations from history.
“Apps like Clean Reader change the text without the author’s permission. They take the author’s words and replace them – sometimes very clumsily – on the basis of some perceived idea of ‘bad words’ versus ‘good words’.
“No permission is sought, or granted. There is no opt-out clause for authors or publishers.”
Mrs Harris was not the only writer to take offence to the app and many readers have also voiced outrage online.
Clean Reader was designed by American couple Jared and Kirsten Maughan amid concern about a book their daughter had read. It is downloadable on Apple and Android devices and is free.
Publicity material for the app, states: “We told her that there was probably an app for this type of thing that would replace profanity with less offensive words and perhaps we should get her a tablet that she could use to read books with.
“To our surprise there wasn’t an app like this. The more we thought about this idea the more we wanted it to be a reality. Eventually we decided we would do all we could to bring Clean Reader to the world.”
