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Archive 1Archive 2

List is completely uncited

The list is completely uncited which is a major problem. I clicked a random selection of titles and in none of the main articles are there even any mention of the book having been banned by a government. As per Wikipedia:Verifiability I highly urge that every single work mentioned here contains a citation verifying that it has been banned, otherwise it should be removed from the list (and failing any such sourcing the article should be deleted). --Saddhiyama (talk) 14:22, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I disagree, partially. Since it is a list, any wikilinked book should have a statement within that book's article stating/citing it has been/is a banned book. Books that are either redlinked or non-wikied should then have a citation to be on the list.--☾Loriendrew☽ ☏(talk) 14:27, 4 October 2013 (UTC)
(e/c)While reviewing this article I seemed to remember that this article was once completely different and contained a number of citations, and a bit of browsing of the article history revealed that sure enough, once this article was very different in appearance and in regard to the number of citations. An editor User:Lord khadgar05 had changed this article from a cited table to an uncited bulletpoint list June 13 2013 with no explanation given. I have restored the old version since the uncited version does not comply to Wikipedia-policy and obviously invites random unsourced additions of dubious nature as the recent history of this article reveals. As such I have also removed the Citations-template I added. Please remember that any future additions to this list will require citations containing information about the exact government ban of the book. Thanks. --Saddhiyama (talk) 14:32, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Chart needs to have a column added

It should also be searchable by country.--Kintetsubuffalo (talk) 12:30, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Either make this comprehensive (worldwide), or specify the region it applies to (Western countries?)

Or delete the article entirely. Because as written, it is *highly* misleading. There is a VERY long list of books that are banned in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, Yemen, and many other Muslim-majority countries, for example. Yet "Saudi" does not currently even appear in the article. For Iran, there is a stub Wikipedia page here: Book censorship in Iran. I don't see one for Saudi Arabia. Benefac (talk) 17:25, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

  • @Benefac:, While I agree with the core of your argument (that the lack of coverage of book banning in the Muslim world is problematic), deleting this article is not the solution. Perhaps you could write the Book censorship in Saudi Arabia, Book censorship in Syria, etc. articles, which could be linked as a "See also" here. LHMask me a question 11:38, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
    • @Lithistman:I wasn't seriously proposing deletion, so much as rethinking-out-loud what this page is about. Thousands of books are banned (and more would be if authorities knew about them) in countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Pakistan, etc. Should we really try to list every one of those thousands of books, or even pretend that we are? That seems onerous, unlikely to occur, prone to selection bias, and not all that encyclopedic in the end. Perhaps we could come up with basic categories of regions which ban books on similar criteria, and basic categories of criteria upon which books are banned, and offer "notable examples" as selected by reliable sources? Travel to any of those countries, do a google-search for anything about Islam (except by state-approved sources, which avoid all criticism of Islam but equally censor the Muslim Brotherhood), politics in that country, criticisms of the monarchy, sex, nude anything, homosexuality, drugs, gossip about locals, etc., and (as a rough estimate) half the websites will be blocked. I assume that similar criteria are used in banning books. Benefac (talk) 07:06, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Green Eggs and Ham

So I was interested in the precise reasons PRC banned Green Eggs and Ham, and found an e-copy of the book (http://api.ning.com/files/x14o-UT6YNBD31K7dYYI16Kw0YEBAAbhvLbNRGbfMeZDtiYbRF*cyx1gazx5HOFA1G85yEH1CgG*lODgHcN3AANUYAOyBL4W736gZzc9rEo_/LiteratureSuppressedonPoliticalGrounds.pdf). It doesn't mention Green Eggs and Ham or Dr. Seuss anywhere in the book. Most articles about the banning don't directly cite wikipedia, but they use the same quotation so I assume this is where they get their information from. Is there another citation for this? Or should it be removed? 86.175.182.227 (talk) 11:34, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Mein Kampf

To the best of my knowledge, "Mein Kampf" is not actually prohibited in Germany, but quite simply the owner of the copyright (which will expire later this year) has not granted permission to reprint since 1945 (the owner being the executors of Hitler's estate, the Free State of Bavaria). Sales of unauthorised copies have been legally prosecuted for reasons of copyright alone, again, to the best of my knowledge. While there are plenty of rumours that there does exist a legal ban on the book as such (i.e., on possession of it), this is not the case and legally printed examples (i.e., printed before May, 1945) are readily available for lending or at least on-site reading at historical libraries. --Stizzleswick (talk) 10:59, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

You are right (Bavaria has allowed the reprinting of some scholarly editions), but isn't that what the article already says? --Saddhiyama (talk) 09:57, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
Sorry about that, and you are right; it does say that in the tabular listing further down in the article--the opening section of the article where the book is mentioned is not very clear on the subject though, hence my attempt at clarification here. --Stizzleswick (talk) 03:39, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
I see. I hadn't noticed the mention of it in the lead, sorry about that. The claim in the lead was indeed wrong and I changed "Germany" to "Austria". --Saddhiyama (talk) 10:29, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

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Harry Potter

Shouldn't Harry_Potter_(series) be on here? 2601:640:4000:8CD0:A90A:5FD8:F86D:F0F5 (talk) 05:21, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

School boards

Are we considering local school boards to be eligible for this list? The intro text mentions school boards, but none of the books in the list cite a school board. If it's allowed, I would add the 11 books banned in New York in the Supreme Court case Island Trees School District v. Pico. I have a citation which lists the titles. [1] - Kzirkel (talk) 13:47, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Public school boards are government entities, like local transit authorities and other special-purpose districts, at least in North America. -- Gordon Ecker, WikiSloth (talk) 05:22, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
I agree that school boards are government entities, but a school board's action is to only prevent young people (sometimes only very young people) from having access to books. This seems qualitatively very different from a government banning a book totally. I would suggest that any cases of school board's banning books be put in a separate section. Pete unseth (talk) 13:24, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

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The Federal Mafia

Still banned - federal USA - but only to some book sellers.. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.243.106.82 (talk) 19:17, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

NWT

"Russia banned New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures

It's not translations, it's interpretation. New World Bible are not Bibles. And it's from a sect. I know American considers all sects as religion, but it's not exactly the same. Should be precised. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:E35:8A8D:FE80:A425:F2D4:5A35:B1C8 (talk) 21:45, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

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Talmud

As a book that was widely banned and burned through the ages, why is the Talmud not in this list?? Bennyb613 (talk) 21:26, 25 September 2016 (UTC) Bennyb613 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bennyb613 (talk • contribs) 21:24, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Suggested new column: "Country"

I suggest to add a new column for the country that banned the respective books to the list. By this the list becomes clearer and can be sorted by country. The countries should be added by Template:Flagicon & name. Could somebody go ahead and add that column?

--Fixuture (talk) 10:00, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

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Unicorn Bookshop Trial

A number of works including those by JG Ballard were effectively banned by the British Government during the Unicorn Bookshop obscenity trial - more info here: http://www.ballardian.com/a-dirty-and-diseased-mind-the-unicorn-bookshop-trial

Not sure if this is worth including? Regards. Chockyegg (talk) 05:02, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

superfluous sentence

Some believe that the banning of specific books is appropriate, such as the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion, in Russia, or Hitler's Mein Kampf, in Austria

Books are only banned by people which consider it appropriate to ban them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.47.74.232 (talk) 02:24, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

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Lex Degrellana

As per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Degrelle: Belgian authorities... also passed a law, the Lex Degrellana, which made it illegal to transfer, possess or receive any book by or about Degrelle. His subsequent work, Campaign in Russia, was banned in Belgium.

-> Shall we add them here? How? It seems to have been a blanket ban - damnatio memoriae. Zezen (talk) 11:18, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

New Column

There should be a new column in Alphabetical list with "Country" title. So, anyone can arrange/order books by country.--Ameen Akbar (talk) 19:50, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

I agree, this would be useful. Seems like a very common use case. --Elephanthunter (talk) 23:48, 12 May 2019 (UTC)
It looks like you added the column, but the change broke some of the formatting. I've gone in and fixed the formatting. I've also filled out most of the remaining information for the column. Although some of the country information might need more detail. --Elephanthunter (talk) 17:09, 13 May 2019 (UTC)
Great, you did it in a very short time. The page looks perfect now. --Ameen Akbar (talk) 18:34, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

Books in photo

The title photo on this article has pictures of at least 3 books not on the list. It's more than a little blurry, so hard to read most of them, but the only ones I could positively identify are all missing:

  • The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
  • The Bluest Eye
  • The Pillars of the Earth

I don't know if this is a difference between books banned by governments and books banned just by certain school libraries or something. But it is notable that the title image for the article does not match any of the contents of the article itself as far as I can tell. (Not sure about the unreadable covers, or those without dust jackets so the title is only on the spine. Somebody else might be able to ID some of the others based on the pictures? 75.112.52.7 (talk) 16:03, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Banned by school districts

I have removed a few titles banned by US school districts, as they are not 'governments.' At it read, it sounded like the books were banned in the city, not the schools. Bkatcher (talk) 20:19, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

The purpose of this article?

This article is vastly incomplete and would be very big if it would contain every banned book. It would be even bigger if it would contain all the historical bans like those 33000 books banned by the Allies in Germany after the war (Leipziger Liste). Additionally the Kassler Liste alone holds 125000 banned titles.

Should the purpose of this article be more like showing only prominent bans and/or summarize large amounts of bans? DerElektriker (talk) 09:27, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

North Korea edit?

The most recent edit to the article changed the text under North Korea from "All foreign books as well as almost all foreign products (regardless of content) are banned in North Korea." to "everything", with no punctuation or capitalization. This is the edit. Is this really a valid edit? — Preceding unsigned comment added by NaiOni (talk • contribs) 12:15, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

I've reverted it. Bkatcher (talk) 13:01, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Merger discussion

Propose Lists of banned books be merged into this article as there seems to be no content other than Wikilinks in the other article and is therefore quite redundant Abcmaxx (talk) 22:49, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

China has banned 9 books?

This can't be right. Shouldn't there be a comment of general numbers of books? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Oglebing (talk • contribs) 04:35, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Anarchist Cookbook

In the UK, the book hasn't officially been banned but a man has been charged with possessing it.[2] Should that be listed on this page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.203.50.13 (talk) 21:09, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Afghanistan

There was a section saying that the Taliban had banned all books in Afghanistan -- literally all books whatsoever. This was cited to four separate references, neither of which said a thing about that being true, and didn't really mention books much at all (they all mentioned, instead, that the Taliban forbade all movies and television). It seemed to me like they were a quite censorious bunch, so I'm sure they banned plenty of books, so I've commented out the section. Anyone who can find some sources is encouraged to add it back. jp×g 22:56, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

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The Netherlands

Printing and selling Mein Kampf is forbidden in the Netherlands - because the State believes it owns the copyright and does not permit reprints. Buying second hand copies is possible, and one can loan it from libraries - although many libraries will only loan it to legal adults and may ever require a "certificate of conduct" (clean rap sheet)

The most famous legal proceedings around banning books relate to "Nader tot U" by Gerard Reve. It contains a passage in which the author imagines having sex with god in the form of a donkey. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:A213:A901:2680:4075:F8D4:EDFB:ABC0 (talk) 16:35, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Missing "Historically" vs "Currently" banned distinction

Hello, please add a column on "ban started" and one on "ban ended". With the recent ban of 1984 in Belarus I was trying to find out where in the world this book is currently banned, but entries for Germany list mainly Nazi Germany and entries for Russia list mainly Soviet Union, so it's rather historic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:908:1065:B8E0:4029:5E23:2C23:CDD0 (talk) 11:58, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

I don't think this is necessary of feasible. A lot of these books weren't officially 'unbanned', people just gradually stopped viewing them as controversial. Bkatcher (talk) 13:39, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Restricting ≠ banning

If a book is not considered appropriate for a particular audience (such as "50 Shade" for public school students) and is restricted for that audience, that does not mean the book is banned. Some people need to realize that fact. Any sources that cannot make that distinction should not be used and any edits based on those sources should be seriously reconsidered. 47.12.161.150 (talk) 20:14, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

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Book banning

In the U.S., books can be challenged by individuals and sometimes, if the demand is great enough they will be removed from school and libraries. However, this is not government book banning such as occurs in other countries. Anyone can still buy the book. Parents who send children to school do have the right to request changes to curriculum, as do people who pay taxes for libraries that in their community can have voice their opinion about which are purchased. Owners of bookstores (online or physical) should be able to determine what books they carry. Those who say they do not have the right to do this are limiting the rights of other people. If a book is actually banned in the U.S. they would not be available. But actually they're quite easy to purchase. However, nobody should be forced to buy them. 2600:8803:F506:7A00:DC71:8FB9:5898:A617 (talk) 22:34, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

So, while ignoring the normative portions, since this isn't the place for those sorts of debates, I'd just like to point out that there is a separate list called "List of most commonly challenged books in the United States" that seems to be more what you are talking about. Cooljeanius (talk) (contribs) 04:13, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
You have it backwards. This list should be officially banned books. Mostly empty. The other link you provided can be for the performative politicians like yourself. 73.221.104.246 (talk) 15:00, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
Yes, that's what I said. The separate list, List of most commonly challenged books in the United States, is the one for what most political book banning debates are about, while this list, List of books banned by governments, is for officially banned books. We seem to be in violent agreement. Cooljeanius (talk) (contribs) 23:55, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
  1. ^ "Island Trees Sch. Dist. v. Pico by Pico 457 U.S. 853 (1982)". Justia. Retrieved 30 September 2015.
  2. ^ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-58926030
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