Earlier today we reported that Amazon is selling a book titled The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure. The book itself is a disgrace – a how-to guide for pedophiles. It includes, among other things, tips on how to get away with it and how to avoid sexually transmitted diseases by purchasing condom-like products for children too small to use actual condoms.
Regardless, Amazon will not remove the book from its store, and has told us “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.” It remains available for sale and download.
Sample text (not safe for humans):
and:
and that’s just from the first few pages. No one here could stomach reading any more.
Amazon’s own policies prohibit content that includes “offensive material,” as well as content that “may lead to the production of an illegal item or illegal activity.” I think any reasonable person would argue that this fails both tests.
We are very much in favor of free speech. But like Facebook’s obsession with Holocaust denial, that doesn’t mean Amazon has to condone something so clearly disgusting, and profit from it.
I, for one, will not buy anything from Amazon until this and any similar titles are removed from their store. If you agree, comment below.
Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN), is a leading global Internet company and one of the most trafficked Internet retail destinations worldwide. Amazon is one of the first companies to sell products deep into the long tail by housing them in numerous warehouses and distributing products from many partner companies. Amazon directly sells or acts as a platform for the sale of a broad range of products. These include books, music, videos, consumer electronics, clothing and household products. The majority of Amazon’s...
Introduced in November 2007, Kindle is an e-reader developed by Amazon.com to allow easy access to a vast library of electronic books to be downloaded and read on the device. Over 90,000 books were available for download at launch; that catalog grew to over 160,000 by August 2008 and was growing by over 25,000 titles per month. Books, newspapers, magazines and blogs are loaded onto the device wirelessly via Amazon’s free EVDO network (called WhisperNet) and are published in...
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Boston, MA
Disrupt Europe: Berlin Hackathon
Berlin, Germany
