This release cannot be sold in the Discogs Marketplace

[Jordan]

Yeah, I can only see that as a victory.

[Ganesha23]

I wrote them asking about the ban and got a reply with basically the same content as Bitewerks quoted above, but saying also that they are ready to discuss the matter.

If they get enough intelligent and polite requests and discussion, who knows if the ban will cease.

[FreakAnimalFinland]

I also asked about general rules and its effects on industrial releases in general. Reply was that f&v decision might have been done in haste and ready to discuss of it. I told XE probably fits their category, but would be weird to band entire label where some releases like Concrete Mascara, Halthan, Golden Rain, Mania, Shift, etc etc. are hardly beyond just regular level of noise provocations.
As soon as word travels that one can send complaints and get stuff removed, I'm pretty sure some squat out there has more working staff in complaint department than discogs has manpower to fulfill their needs, hah...

[Ganesha23]

I also mentioned them the industrial scene's documentary aspects as well as the traditional shock tactics. Good that they've got similar messages from different sources.

[jc]

I tried out listing an End Apathy and Definite Hate record and the message I received was "Sorry, this release cannot be sold in the Discogs Marketplace. If you have questions please email us at marketplace at discogs dot com." You are correct that you can still sell Youngland albums though. Hilarious considering that you can buy a comp they were on called "White Pride World Wide V."

In case you are not aware, Discogs changed their policy allowing the sale of all items well over a year ago as a result of Wade Michael Page.

Yet that guy's bands are still allowed on sale at discogs.

It seems to be a decision based on notions of good taste rather than anything else. F&V and all the artists should congratulate themselves for successfully being so obnoxiously offensive that discogs remove their music before they remove the music of actual murderers!

Ultimately discogs can do whatever the hell they want with their business. Like when the Grey Wolves 'Catholic Priests Fuck Children' was removed from ebay many years ago, it's best to see the funny side of this.

[ConcreteMascara]

Not much to add here. Blanket censorship/restrictions on labels is obviously dumb. I mean what about Satanic Skinhead Propaganda / ADR? I thought Deathkey generally received a lot of hate mail and shit.

I see it as a good thing though. No more price gouging for OOP F&V releases through Discogs.

[Goat93]

I was always wondering when this day would come - I am afraid more will follow

More already have followed, but in Strange Way:

http://www.ovz-online.de/web/ovz/nachrichten/detail/-/specific/Nazi-Metal-in-Leipzig-Hessische-Beamte-durchsuchen-Wohnung-in-der-Messestadt-3593214875


For Non Germans, the Police have raidet a Black Metal label (again) and this Time also some Customers of the Label. Since its not Forbidden to Buy it, its absolute Strange to Raid the Customers at all.

[Ashmonger]

Hah, seems like a good idea of myself to get some F&V titles for my distro (which I decided on before reading this).

But like said, I'm not at all against idea that noise would go back from discogs to mailorders, trades between fans, classified ads etc.

Indeed. Discogs is basically useful as a database and sometimes I buy stuff through it if it's stuff that I don't regularly see in distro's.
At the moment for my own distro, I sell most stuff through discogs. Not because that's the way I want it, but I use both a blogspot and discogs and most people (even some who got to know my distro through flyers) still get stuff through discogs. Of course you do have the ranking, which helps in seeing whether a seller is good, which you don't have through e-mail, but since there's the discogs fee and most items on there are paid for through paypal, I have quite some items for which I ask a bit more than on my blogspot...
Also, this way I have to keep both the discogs page and blogspot up to date.
To conclude, discogs is a useful tool, but I could run my distro without it. So for people reading this: yes, you can order through my blogspot and e-mail, you won't get ripped off, hehe.

And I do understand that from a business point of view it's a good decision they don't want to have some stuff sold through their website. I just hope they don't decide to get it banned from their website altogether, that would be a petty.

[Half Aborted]

I see it as a good thing though. No more price gouging for OOP F&V releases through Discogs.

Yeah, gouging tends to be a lot less common on message boards, so this is one advantage at least. A shame to see censorship on discogs though, I use it quite a lot.

[impulse manslaughter]

fucking stupid..

[Dr Alex]

Fuckin' censorship!!! I hate it!!
Art should be without censorship!

[online prowler]

Got this response today - one day after I sent Discogs a minor constructive rant. Will put in some more weighted thoughts and formulations. Seems like there is a possibility as many have mentioned that DC will lift the ban on some titles. Nevertheless what happens I strongly suggest that if you are a F&V or noise fanatic that you drop DC a short  letter. This is important for all artists and our field of work.


Hi T,

I am sorry that the error message offers outdated information. I have created a project in our work queue to get that fixed.

Thank you for your thoughtful message about this label. You can find a forum post from me yesterday explaining what is happening with policy: http://www.discogs.com/forum/thread/52165eaf4c5e2e7743646c8e#5216794faba9e808c299f552

As for this particular label, they may have been blocked in haste and I can discuss unblocking them with you.
http://www.discogs.com/label/Filth+And+Violence

As with any case, we cannot listen to the contents of all of these, but have mostly imagery and titles to go off of. In looking through the content of that label, I can see why the instinct was to block the sale of those items. Does the content of each release reflect its title?

I mentioned in the forum thread that we have been dealing with these on a case by case basis, currently working on the best method to reflect the kind of community we wish to be. It is definitely a tricky line and we acknowledge that there are controversial titles and releases with artistic merit. We are mostly interested in not supporting the sale of items that propagate extreme hate. Thank you for the conversation.

I will be reviewing the label on an individual artist basis early next week, discussing with the team here, and look forward to your response. Thank you.

Best,

Leeann

[fireblanket]

You can't really call this censorship. They haven't removed F&V from the database, just stopped selling it. I am very sure the people running Discogs don't really care about stuff like this, they are mainly concerned with making money. As Discogs get bigger and more well known it will obviously attract more people and more interest. If some crappy newspaper runs a story that their site is making money from WP releases then it's going to look pretty bad for them with a potential of loosing money. I bet that's the main reason they are doing this.

[martialgodmask]

From a social perspective, I abhor someone deciding what is right or wrong for me to see, hear, experience etc. From a business perspective, I guess I can understand why a website would want to avoid any potential negative implications of handling any monies as a result of the sale of these items. Unfortunately, the decision seems to be somewhat knee-jerk and slap-dash, but a website/database/whatever like Discogs is not specifically there for noise et al. so a lack of awareness of the content of this material is probably to be expected I would have thought. They want to protect themselves as at the end of the day.

However, as has been pointed out the "hate ban" has not yet caught up with material many would consider to be exactly what they would want to cut out, but realistically can they cast a net that catches everything consistently without feedback from moralists and without missing something that slips through while their backs are turned? Doubtful. A mammoth task, I'm sure, and therefore will likely always be inconsistent or at times contradictory.

[martialgodmask]

I don't really buy the 'we don't want to make money off of racist music' excuse. They didn't mind it much for however many years until this policy kicked in.

They may very well not buy it themselves, it's PR isn't it? Possibly something has happened and they have made F&V an example as a result (why F&V in particular, who knows?), or possibly some cunt has had a whinge to them and whilst the reality is they possibly don't actually care that much at all they've had to take some action to maintain their professional "standards". That they are prepared to discuss and consider overturning the ban certainly suggests it wasn't done as a result of any research as otherwise they could refuse to discuss and provide evidence for why which, based on the responses you all seem to be getting, doesn't seem to be forthcoming.