Constitutional Law

Amazon.com no longer selling guide for pedophiles

By By The Associated Press

NEW YORK ? Amazon is no longer selling a self-published guide for pedophiles that generated outrage on the Internet and threats to boycott the online retailer.

It wasn't immediately clear whether Amazon.com Inc. had pulled the item, or whether the author withdrew it. Amazon did not return messages today seeking comment for this story.

The book, The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover's Code of Conduct, offers advice to pedophiles on how to make a sexual encounter with a child as safe as possible. It includes first-person descriptions of such encounters, purportedly written from a child's point of view.

Once discovered yesterday, the book triggered outrage from commenters on sites such as Twitter. Some people threatened to boycott the online store until Amazon removed the book. Two petitions on Facebook alone won more than 13,500 supporters.

The availability of the book called into question whether Amazon has any procedures ? or even an obligation ? to vet books before they are sold in its online stores.

The Pedophile's Guide is an electronic book that was 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 pedophiles 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 pedophiles 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 did.

Child online safety-advocacy group Enough is Enough said it wasn't surprised that someone would publish such a book, but believed that Amazon should remove it. It said selling the book lends the impression that child abuse is normal.

That doesn't mean Amazon should be prohibited from selling it, counters Christopher Finan, president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression. He says Amazon has the right under the First Amendment to sell any book that is not child pornography or legally obscene. Finan says Greaves' book doesn't amount to either because it does not include illustrations.

This isn't the first time Amazon has sold material that promotes illegal activity. It is currently 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.

Full post as published by First Amendment Center on November 10, 2010 (boomark / email).