postal and retail censorship

This page considers postal censorship and retail censorship, mechanisms for restricting access to content that are traditional and that retain their importance in advanced economies.

It covers -

• introduction
• the posts
• retail

     introduction

In a digital age - where information is communicated through cable and broadcast television/radio, the internet and phone - it is easy to forget that censorship in the modern and early-modern state centred on suppression of offensive or subversive text and images by

• restrictions on retailing (prohibition on sale of particular content and seizure of that content from retailers and wholesalers)
• interdiction of disssemination of content through the posts, encompassing items such as individual books and postcards mailed to consumers, letters between individuals, and multiple copies of items from wholesalers to retailers.

In the US the federal Customs Law of 1842 indicated (s 28) that

the importation of all indecent and obscene prints, paintings, lithographs, engravings, and transparencies is hereby prohibited; and no invoice or package whatever, or any part thereof, shall be admitted entry, in which any such articles are contained; and all invoices and packages whereof any such articles shall compose a part, are hereby declared to be liable to be proceeded against, seized, and forfeited, by due course of law, and the said articles shall be forewith destroyed

     the posts

Susan Whyman's 2000 paper Postal Censorship in England 1635-1844 quotes an 1844 journalist as stating

When a man puts a letter into the post-office he confidently believes … the communications he makes to his family and friends will not be read, either by Postmaster-General, or penny postman, or Secretary of State, and that no human being will venture to break a seal which … has been regarded as sacred as the door of his own private residence

The 1873 'Comstock Act' in the US indicated that some communications, to gentlement or otherwise, were more equal than others -

Every obscene, lewd, lascivious, of filthy book, pamphlet, picture paper, letter, writing, print or other publication of an indecent character … is declared to be nonmailable matter and shall not be conveyed in the mails or delivered from any post office or by any letter carrier.

Whoever knowingly uses the mail for the mailing, carriage in the mails, or delivery of anything declared by this section to be nonmailable, or knowingly causes to be delivered by mail according to the direction thereon, or at the place at which it is directed to be delivered by the person to whom it is addressed, or knowingly takes any such thing from the mails for the purpose of circulating or disposing thereof, shall be fined not more than $5,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both, for the first such offense, and shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both, for each such offense thereafter

As the preceding paragraphs suggest, authorities before and after that year were active in inspecting and intercepting communications via the mails during peace and war. Early Victorian confidence about the sacrosanct nature of postal privacy was misplaced and it was further weakened through measures such as the UK Post Office Protection Act of 1884, which enabled anyone who received offensive material through the post to complain to the postal authorities, which could gain a warrant from the Home Secretary for opening mail.

Most governments have turned away from overtly political intervention but are still active in suppressing obscene material sent by mail. Some postal services also suppress particular types of correspondence and publications.

Section 30E of the federal Crimes Act 1914 in Australia for example provides that

No book, periodical, pamphlet, handbill, poster or newspaper issued by or on behalf or in the interests of any unlawful association shall:
(a) if posted in Australia, be transmitted through the post

... Any book, periodical, pamphlet, handbill, poster or newspaper posted in Australia, the transmission of which would be a contravention of this Act, shall be forfeited to the Commonwealth and shall be destroyed or disposed of as provided in the regulations in force under the Postal Services Act 1975.

Custodial institutions, as noted later in this guide, also examine mail to/from inmates of many prisons.

The US Postal Inspection Service reported around 187 arrests and 184 convictions for obscene material via the post in 1996 (down from 253 arrests and 259 convictions in 1995), out of some 680 million items delivered to 145 million addresses on an average day. Australia similarly detained large quantities of 419 scam letters from overseas in the 1980s.

Postal surveillance is considered in the complementary profile on surveillance & identification here, highlighting studies such as Philip Stenning's Postal Security and Mail Opening: A Review of the Law (Toronto: Centre of Criminology, Uni of Toronto 1981), the discussion of mail/telecommunications privacy here and the postal system.

For earlier epochs see works such as Morality and the Mail in Nineteenth-Century America (Champaign: Uni of Illinois Press 2003) by Wayne Fuller.

     and retail distribution

Concentration on government regulation, particularly in the US, has led some observers to overlook more mundane concerns about retail distribution. For many people the legality of a particular item is largely irrelevant if in practice that item cannot be obtained.

In the US critics have argued that the refusal of the dominant book chains and mega-retailers such as WalMart to carry particular journals or books is a tacit form of censorship. Closer to home we have noted that only one retailer in Australia's national capital carries 'newstand' copies of the London Review of Books and Financial Times: if you want a copy you need a subscription.

There are no easy solutions to restricted access. France's 1947 'loi Bichet', for example was intended to ensure that every newspaper and magazine title had access to proper distribution. Critics within the distribution sector lament that in practice it obliges vendors to "accept everything they receive" - currently around 2,000 titles - and thereby undermines the viability of newstands.

Retailing of erotica may also be 'zoned', with local government agencies for example refusing permission for vending of print or other publications from particular localities and implicitly or explicitly restricting sellers of adult content to specific precincts.

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