Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure

[Gogan]

Wow, interesting issue. I don't think Zorthy's book examples are quite the same thing. If there were books like "How To Kill", then yeah, it'd be similar. Oh wait... there actually are books like that:

Kill Without Joy
Death Dealers Manual

Apparently those are ok, but a book on pedophilia not so much? I guess in our violence-desensitized world, killing is more accepted than pedophilia. After all, you can't turn on the news for 5 minutes without hearing about a murder somewhere. We almost tune it out after a while. Pedophilia, on the other hand, definitely catches our attention.

I'm not sure where the law falls on these kinds of issues. Does free speech really allow for these kinds of books to be distributed? I guess you can't stop someone from self-publishing a book, but it's legal for Amazon and other distributers to carry it? There are some interesting comments at:

http://gigaom.com/2010/11/10/amazon-kindle-pedophilia/

CNN interviewed the author:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/11/10/ama....guide/?hpt=T2

One of the choice quotes there: "Penetration is out. You can't do that with a child, but kissing and fondling I don't think is that big of a problem."

Wow...

Apparently there's some legal precedent in the matter:

http://www.spj.org/news.asp?ref=185

A U.S. appellate court found the publisher of the book "Hit Man" liable as an accessory to triple murder committed by one of its reader. I don't know what other cases have been tried for this sort of thing, but I'd like to think that someone found guilty of pedophilia and owning a copy of this guy's book would also hold the author liable as an accessory. Can Amazon be accountable too though? Dunno.

Anyway, crazy stuff. That author must have a death wish to print something like that.

[Fusa]

Can Amazon be accountable too though?

lawyers would fight anything, just like that craigslist bullshit with the prosistution of women via craiglist.


logistically it would be to much for a site to filter everysingle ad, and im sure im the terms of argeement it would say something about what you advertise yadda yadda yadda, in the end we're not liable.

[Gronthor]

The check and balances of this would be that the public would boycott Amazon over this enough to hit their books to force the organization to drop the book. Thus you keep freedom of speech but public opposition to the company policy would invoke the change.

The problem is that i would say the majority of people would find this immoral (the book) the media in which we rely on does not share the same values as the general public.

[Onion]

According to that CNN article, part of Amazon's guidelines for what is not allowed say:

Originally Posted by CNN

Pornography, offensive material and "titles which may lead to... illegal activity" are among the prohibited content listed in the guidelines.

I don't see how this falls out of that category. I would say it qualifies as both offensive (to the large majority) and potentially leading to illegal activity. That being said, with the vast amount of books out there that tell you how to make a bomb or kill someone, I don't see the latter argument holding any water.

The point of the first amendment was to provide everyone with protection to do whatever they want as long as it doesn't infringe on that same right of someone else, as well as the law (provided the law is constitutional).

Someone buying the book, or Amazon selling it, isn't what I see as wrong, but if something happened as a result of someone owning the book I believe the author should be held responsible like in that case with the book "Hit Man". If you're going to instruct someone how to do something and publish it for anyone to obtain, you should be responsible for the repercussions of that decision. People are held responsible for yelling FIRE in a crowded area if anyone is injured, I see it as the same issue.