Amazon
AP report:
Amazon.com is selling a self-published guide that offers advice to paedophiles, and that has generated outrage on the internet and threats to boycott the retailer.
The availability of “The Paedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover’s Code of Conduct” calls into question whether Amazon has any procedures – or even an obligation – to vet books before they are sold in its online stores. Amazon did not respond to multiple email and phone messages.
The title is an electronic book available for Amazon’s Kindle e-reader and the company’s software for reading Kindle books on mobile phones and computers. Amazon allows authors to submit their own works and shares revenue with them.
Amazon have not now removed the book from sale, and that is a prudent move. But people go too far in demanding that Amazon should somehow vet books before they sell them. This would destroy the economics of online selling. Amazon has millions of titles. They would have to hire around 1,000 staff to do nothing but read books if they were to be held liable for them.
Certainly once a complaint is received, they should act swiftly to verify it is breaks any laws, or policies. But don’t start demanding they vet material in advance from authors.
November 12th, 2010 at 12:06 pm
I’ll be sending them my CV…
November 12th, 2010 at 12:06 pm
Sounds like the book is not now available on Amazon.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/11/11/pedophile-guide-author-confident-title-return-amazon/
The title of the book is contrary to the author’s stated objective “to make pedophile situations safer for those juveniles that find themselves involved in them”.
November 12th, 2010 at 12:06 pm
I assume this was supposed to read “… now removed…”.
November 12th, 2010 at 12:10 pm
I would say this is an example of a process that is working. Someone self-publishes something offensive, some other people notice it and call it out, someone takes action. The crux of free speech is that people can say what they want, and other people can point out that it is offensive. The law shouldn’t go around trying to pre-empt things in the absence of a complaint.
November 12th, 2010 at 12:19 pm
I dunno PaulL; spammers use similar arguments. I don’t have a problem with anti-spam legislation. They’re a cancer.
November 12th, 2010 at 12:26 pm
adze – I presume there is already a law that deals with paedophilia.
I don’t think there needs to be a law that requires Amazon to pre-screen all books before they make them available. Similarly, I don’t think there should be a law that requires an ISP to review all e-mail from their customers before forwarding it, to check it isn’t spam. But once they’re notified of spam originating on their network, they should be obliged to do something to try to stop it.
November 12th, 2010 at 12:30 pm
FFS it’s not a free speech issue. Amazon are choosing to put up products for sale, and making money off it.
The prevailing feeling here seems to be that Amazon should not feel any sense of responsibility for their wares, or any obligation to know what they are selling and whether it’s legal or not.
I could go into business making children’s highchairs, real cheap quick and nasty ones shot together with a nailgun. If a few leave my workshop with nail heads sticking out, it’s cool right? As soon as the first kid gets stuck with one, the parents can bring it back for a full refund and I can think about changing my product lineup. Seems pretty responsible to me.
November 12th, 2010 at 12:32 pm
I would hope that purchasers of this book would have their identities passed on to authorities.
November 12th, 2010 at 12:40 pm
@PaulL
This was the bit I was responding to. If by “free speech” you mean “free speech to the extent permitted by law”, I would agree. I’m not for a moment suggesting that ISPs should police communications.
No, there is a law that a) prohibits offensive material, and b) sexual contact with children.
Spam is one misuse of communication, publishing materials that promote paedophilia as a lifestyle is another.
November 12th, 2010 at 12:44 pm
RRM: just because they make a profit doesn’t mean we should load them down with administration. Amazon are more of an aggregator than a publisher. I can understand a local shop needing to know what they’re selling – they have someone there every day who looks at each product they sell. Although arguably some of the big retailers wouldn’t have detailed information on commodity products.
With Amazon, part of the attraction is the low barriers to entry. If we introduce vetting so as to prevent a very small number of books that might be an issue, then it means every single person who wants to self publish a book will now have to pay for that vetting. And we’ve therefore reduced the list of books available. I think the cost of that loss of diversity should be considered.
November 12th, 2010 at 12:52 pm
Last person to order from Amazon was someone named G. Capill from a prison in NZ.
November 12th, 2010 at 1:13 pm
Amazon also sell copies of Mein Kampf, even tho most people think that invading Poland and murdering millions of Jews is offensive.
Censorship makes me feel very uneasy. There are plenty of instances recently of Greens promoting the idea that criticism of global warming “science” should be censored, or even made illegal. I’m sure those groups would be more than willing to lobby Amazon to have books they don’t like removed from sale.
If it is legal to write a book, then I don’t have much problem with Amazon selling it. If the NZ government wants to restrict the sale to NZers and to make possession of a particular book a crime, then that is a different matter. The history of censorship in NZ is a long and sad one, but at least it is done with the consent of elected MPs rather than in response to public pressure.
November 12th, 2010 at 1:48 pm
PaulL: I’m not saying punish them for making money. But if Amazon.com are not responsible for the products that are for sale on their site, who is? No-one?
davidp: Excellent point. I think Mein kampf needs to be available as a super-important historical document. But I don’t like the idea of the pedo book being available, and I can’t quite say what the difference is. Hmmm….
November 12th, 2010 at 1:57 pm
ABC News is reporting that the book has been yanked from it’s Kindle store
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/amazon-removes-pedophilia-book-store/story?id=12119035
November 12th, 2010 at 1:58 pm
The censorship jihad is the greatest promotional campaign the author could have asked for. When this blew up yesterday the book had sales of zero – now it’s in triple figures.
November 12th, 2010 at 2:04 pm
RRM… In the past, we’ve seen groups in NZ lobby to censor films such as Life of Brian and Last Temptation of Christ. I vaguely recall some group being opposed even to the Da Vinci Code. The government ignored those, thank goodness, but used to censor main stream films on a fairly regular basis in order to appease the community standards of the Pat Bartlett crowd.
All Quiet on the Western Front was banned for a long time, despite being generally recognised as being an anti-war masterpiece. James Joyce’s Ulysses was only allowed to be screened to audiences segregated by gender. I saw an exhibition about NZ’s relationship with its Pacific “colonies” a few years ago at the National Library. One of the items concerned the Tin Tin books (or film ?), which had been judged to be acceptable in NZ but we’d banned in the colonies because they showed a dog getting the better of white men. Video games and t-shirts have been censored in NZ in recent times.
My point? Censors won’t stop at banning just one book.
November 12th, 2010 at 3:47 pm
davidp points out:
Oh but that presumably doesn’t bother the book burners who’re pursing their lips and applauding. Amazon stocks multiple versions of Mein Kampf, and has stocks of inflammatory (to some) material ranging from The Communist Manifesto to the Koran.
Different groups find all these titles highly offensive. And if we’re going to throw up the “but they’re not illegal” diversion, then one can also buy:
Rape Me – “A young woman writes down her rape fantasies in her diary, and then one day her fantasies become real. Or is it all in her mind? Either way, it is an experience that burns deep and hot into her wanton soul.”
Rape and Rough Sex: from Fantasy to Personal Experience – “…many women and men manifest their obsessions of rape into reality, with mixed results. In some cases, Dr. Garth Mundinger-Klow finds that those women who enjoy rough sex once had a personal rape experience that they secretly enjoyed and wish to re-encounter with either their lovers or strangers.”
Forbidden Desires: An Anthology of the Taboo – “The writers in this book–some Olympia Press regulars, some new–candidly reveal true humanity when it comes to fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, perverts and nymphets, bathroom freaks and S/M wannabes.”
…and so on.
Get those pencils sharpened, folks; you’ve only just begun censoring the list of things that offend you. Of course you won’t mind when people of quite different persuasions starting demanding the withdrawal of titles they find offensive, will you?
November 12th, 2010 at 5:59 pm
Well, if there is one pervert out there who isn’t offended by pedophilia, it would be you of course.
November 12th, 2010 at 7:07 pm
“The Paedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure”
First, catch your child…
November 12th, 2010 at 7:53 pm
I think it’s wrong to ban the sales of the book. What I do think though, is that the FBI should be given the details of all who purchase the book and they should wiretap their internet connections – my bet is that you’ll reap a grand harvest of child pornographers and thus the book’s availability will have been a trojan horse to paedophiles……
November 12th, 2010 at 8:57 pm
Angus:
I take it you’re talking to me, An(g)us? Would you like to come out from behind your big brave pseudonym to do it? No? Thought not.
Anyway you foolish wee (and I do mean wee) laddie, as usual the point has gone well over your head. I’m offended by fascism, rape, and by fundies of the Christian and Muslim persuasion, as well as pedophilia. Amazon has books on all them, too.
I don’t want to see any of them practiced (I mean only the intolerant forms of religion) but I’m not wetting myself about having them banned, let alone trying to have discussion of them banned. Because that’d make me no better than the fatwa-issuing fundies, or the Nazis, with whom, it seems, you have no trouble associating yourself in calling for book burnings (and author burnings too, I suspect).
So… either you knew the difference and you’re a petty little jerk trying to make a point. Or you didn’t, and you’re thick. Which is it?
November 12th, 2010 at 10:11 pm
Without having read the book I can’t say whether it is good, bad or indifferent. I suspect most who are condemning it haven’t read it either.
Censorship makes very uneasy.
November 12th, 2010 at 11:17 pm
Extreme silliness to have ever used that title, which clearly took a lot of thought… as it does have a ring to it. Some people! I mean one wouldn’t be hard pressed to invent offensive titles for the bible or other respected dramas either.
November 13th, 2010 at 7:36 pm
I agree with Angus about Rex. So paedophilia OK is it Rex?
November 13th, 2010 at 10:49 pm
Scott:
Don’t you get it either? No, it’s not. Nor is violence in the name of Islamic fundamentalism. Neitehr is rape. Neither is nazism. Amazon sells books about all these. And so it should.
But talking about them is; in fact it’s not only the mark of a healthy democracy that one can do so, but it’s healthy in that it raises awareness of the issues.
Or does “I disapprove of it” now count as the standard upon which we as a society start censoring not the acts (which are and ought to be unacceptable) but books, movies, internet sites etc that merely discuss the acts? That’s one hell of a slippery slope, Scott…
Would you censor any of the books I’ve mentioned above? I presume not. Then your question to me makes as much sense as me asking you “So rape’s okay then is it, Scott?”