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I normally don't care about this stuff... and it seems like a "nothing issue" but it really feels like someone is smoothing off the edges of classic works here.

All those changes culminate in an overall reversion to the mean (ordinary). Ordinary is boring... its story books. Shaving off attributes for the sake of what, exactly?

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People should not be able to retroactively edit books.

Imagine they rewrite lord of the rings and make everyone a woman.

How is that ok?

What would be the actual harm? It's no different from Disney rewriting Robin Hood to make everyone animals. All the other takes on Robin Hood still exist.

The harm comes when the original work stops being sold to force new buyers to only ever have access to the rewrite.

I counter: it should be okay for anyone to retroactively edit books. The problem here is not that the books are being made worse, but that the copyright holders are the ones doing it, they’re the only ones who can legally publish the book, and thus as used copies deteriorate and disappear, the only legally published editions available will be the censored versions.

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