Amazon book offers advice to paedophiles
ONLINE retailer Amazon is selling a self-published guide that offers advice to paedophiles.
ONLINE retailer Amazon is selling a self-published guide that offers advice to paedophiles, generating outrage on the internet and boycott threats.
The availability of The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover's Code of Conductcalls into question whether Amazon has any procedures - or even an obligation - to vet books before they are sold in its online stores.
Within the first few pages, readers are given advice on such things as masturbation material and what substitutes for a condom that will fit children.
To date, the book has garnered more than 1600 reviews, most of them - unsurprisingly - voicing their disgust.
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 issues guidelines banning certain materials, including those deemed offensive.
However, the company doesn't elaborate on what constitutes offensive content, saying simply that it is "probably what you would expect".
Amazon also doesn't promise to remove or protect any one category of books.
The author of The Pedophile's Guide, listed as Philip R Greaves II, argues that paedophiles are misunderstood, as the word literally means to love a child.
The author adds that it is only a crime to act on sexual impulses toward children and offers advice that purportedly allows paedophiles to abide by the law.
Many users on Twitter called on Amazon to pull the book and a few threatened to boycott the retailer until it does.
Child online safety advocacy group Enough is Enough says it isn't surprised that someone would publish such a book, but believes that Amazon should remove it.
It says selling the book lends the impression that child abuse is normal.
This isn't the first time Amazon has sold material that promotes illegal activity.
It is accepting pre-orders for the hardcover version of I Am the Market: How to Smuggle Cocaine by the Ton, in Five Easy Lessons by Luca Rastello.
Nor is it the first time Amazon has come under attack for selling objectionable content in its store.
In 2002, the United States Justice Foundation, a conservative group, threatened to sue Amazon for selling Understanding Loved Boys and Boylovers. That title is still available through Amazon.
In 2009, Amazon stopped selling RapeLay, a first-person video game in which the protagonist stalks and then rapes a mother and her daughters, after it was widely condemned in the media and by various interest groups.
Update: Amazon gave this comment to TechCrunch in response to the outcry:
“Amazon believes it is censorship not to sell certain books simply because we or others believe their message is objectionable. Amazon does not support or promote hatred or criminal acts, however, we do support the right of every individual to make their own purchasing decisions.”