# Author of pedophile book arrested. **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 21, 2010, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/author-of-pedophile-book-arrested/564897 "2010-12-21T01:14:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Rhythmdvl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85f322/32.png) [@Rhythmdvl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhythmdvl)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2010, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/author-of-pedophile-book-arrested/564897/21 "2010-12-21T19:56:52Z")
> [@](#): > > The self-published author was arrested in Pueblo, Colorado, on a Florida felony warrant after undercover detectives in Polk County purchased and received a copy of the book through the mail. It doesn’t say how the detectives learned of the book or purchased it. I dare say, though, that it’s unlikely it was directly advertised to them. What’s the relevant law regarding the extent of a town’s reach in enforcing its obscenity standards? ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2010, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/author-of-pedophile-book-arrested/564897/22 "2010-12-21T20:13:45Z")
> [@JoseB](#): > > On the other hand, I understand that most of the “recipes” in the _Anarchist’s Cookbook_ don’t really work, am I right? Also, that some of them are downright dangerous. > > (In the interest of full disclosure, I have never read the book in question, so I have no idea about the precise nature of those “recipes”, only what I have read _about_ them). I used to own that book and you are correct. The man who wrote it isn’t the copyright holder anymore and has worked very hard to get people not to buy it for that reason. If he had his way, it would have been taken out of circulation. The book probably is protected speech. I wonder if the author could be successfully civilly sued by the victim of someone who bought the book and used the techniques described in it. ---
**Author:** ![Implicit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Implicit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Implicit)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2010, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/author-of-pedophile-book-arrested/564897/23 "2010-12-21T20:21:49Z")
> [@Rhythmdvl](#): > > It doesn’t say how the detectives learned of the book or purchased it. I dare say, though, that it’s unlikely it was directly advertised to them. What’s the relevant law regarding the extent of a town’s reach in enforcing its obscenity standards? It isn’t the first time this Sheriff has tried to [police the internet](http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/051018glaser/). ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2010, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/author-of-pedophile-book-arrested/564897/24 "2010-12-21T21:05:59Z")
> [@Larry\_Mudd](#): > > Haven’t read any excerpts from the offending book, but would tend to agree. > > Should Paul Stamets be prosecuted for his [comprehensive manual on mushroom cultivation](http://www.amazon.com/Growing-Gourmet-Medicinal-Mushrooms-Stamets/dp/1580081754), which incidentally includes prohbited species’ growth parameters? I don’t know how the courts will come down in the case in question. However, remember that in the case, the issue is that the book is claimed to be obscene. I don’t think anyone would claim that a book on how to grow mushrooms, of whatever sort, is obscene. It’s think it’s pretty well established case law that books describing illegal activities are protected by the first amendment, except if they are obscene. ---
**Author:** ![fuzzypickles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/9d8465/32.png) [@fuzzypickles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fuzzypickles)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2010, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/author-of-pedophile-book-arrested/564897/25 "2010-12-22T05:55:33Z")
Not sure if he deserves to be arrested, but he _is_ a potentially dangerous scumbag, no matter what. They’ll certainly pin something more substantial on that child-fucking bastard – very few pedophiles have zero skeletons in the closet. That said…it’s Florida. They’d probably ban the _Kama Sutra_ if they could get away with it. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2010, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/author-of-pedophile-book-arrested/564897/26 "2010-12-22T06:29:29Z")
It must be very difficult for these people to exist in American culture. They have to be mentally ill, but lots of people are. But how does a person with that drive exist? Can they just suppress the drive for a whole life. That has to be a terrible way to live. If they act on it, they are in terrible legal trouble and if they don’t .they are repressed sexually for their whole existence. I feel sad for them. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2010, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/author-of-pedophile-book-arrested/564897/27 "2010-12-22T06:34:43Z")
I’ve always felt the same way: extremely sorry for them. Imagine if you were a normal heterosexual male attracted to women. All around you, as you go about your life, you see women you find attractive. Yet you can’t have sex with any of them; you can’t have any kind of romantic relationship with them; you aren’t even allowed to possess porn of women. Could you stay sane in this situation? Every biological impulse in your mind is telling you to do something that you’re not allowed to do; “not allowed” is a huge understatement. Doing it will make you a total pariah, outcast from society, subject to vigilante justice and extreme brutality if you are imprisoned. It sounds like the ultimate hell. ---
**Author:** ![Norse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a9adbd/32.png) [@Norse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Norse)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2010, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/author-of-pedophile-book-arrested/564897/28 "2010-12-22T08:18:00Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > Imagine if you were a normal heterosexual male attracted to women. […] Yeah, but there’s a slight difference here: One (the hetero- or for that case homosexual male) is attracted to subjects who are capable of adult, informed consent, and most such relationships have the potential for being quite symmetrical in terms of power over the other. The other one is attracted to subjects who are _not_ capable of informed consent, and a relationship like that will never be symmetrical. Don’t you think that that small fact makes a little bit of a difference? For me, there’s a ton of difference between things I would want to do that would harm other people and things I would want to do that will _not_ harm other people. ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2010, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/author-of-pedophile-book-arrested/564897/29 "2010-12-22T12:33:43Z")
This guy will probably be busted for his own child pron stash soon enough. ---
**Author:** ![Illuminatiprimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/illuminatiprimus/32/11520_2.png) [@Illuminatiprimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Illuminatiprimus)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2010, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/author-of-pedophile-book-arrested/564897/30 "2010-12-22T15:08:07Z")
> [@Norse](#): > > Yeah, but there’s a slight difference here: One (the hetero- or for that case homosexual male) is attracted to subjects who are capable of adult, informed consent, and most such relationships have the potential for being quite symmetrical in terms of power over the other. The other one is attracted to subjects who are _not_ capable of informed consent, and a relationship like that will never be symmetrical. Don’t you think that that small fact makes a little bit of a difference? > > For me, there’s a ton of difference between things I would want to do that would harm other people and things I would want to do that will _not_ harm other people. The point I’m pretty sure Argent Towers was making was not that the plight of a paedophile makes it justifiable to molest children, but that in our moral outrage we forget it must be a pretty shitty existence being attracted to something you know you can’t ever have without breaking the law. As a gay I and my kin were in the same position less than fifty years ago, so I can truly empathise. Does that mean that I condone child molestation? Of course not. Can I imagine what it feels like to be the person doing it? Yes. Does it suck for everyone involved? Yes. What depresses me is that it’s rarely even possible to have a dispassionate discussion about paedophilia itself without it automatically being conflated with being an advocate for sexual abuse. I would have thought that trying to approach the topic rationally and come up with some kind of “least bad” solution would be better than just chanting as a matra “child molesters should be executed” as if that makes the problem go away. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2010, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/author-of-pedophile-book-arrested/564897/31 "2010-12-22T21:04:47Z")
> [@Shirley\_Ujest](#): > > This guy will probably be busted for his own child pron stash soon enough. Y’know what… it would not surprise me at all if the authorities were perfectly aware of the debatability of “long-arming” him with obscenity charges, but are confident that if only they can start a process by which reasonable suspicion can be invoked to go digging in-depth they will, as you and **fuzzypickles** suggest, find some real evidence of actual pedophilic/CP activity that will nail him regardless of what happens with the book in question. > [@Illuminatiprimus](#): > > What depresses me is that it’s rarely even possible to have a dispassionate discussion about paedophilia itself without it automatically being conflated with being an advocate for sexual abuse. I would have thought that trying to approach the topic rationally and come up with some kind of “least bad” solution would be better than just chanting as a matra “child molesters should be executed” as if that makes the problem go away. Good luck with that. Notice how Argent’s post was immediately challenged along the lines that the comparison wasn’t valid because one desire is harmful and the other isn’t. In the end our best hope is that it be so that humans are NOT slaves to our desires and that we can choose to NOT indulge our drives if we know it will harm others. That at least narrows the risk pool to the sociopathic ones who know it’s wrong to hurt others but don’t care. Which brings me to one thought I can’t shake off, that this fellow either had a significant brainskid, a hyperinflation of balls, or both, to publish this material and[ place it on Amazon for commercial distribution and, once that channel got closed _due to attracting unwanted hostile attention_ ( d u h ), to then agree to fulfill a mail-order solicitation from strangers. Of course now I have to imagine that the pedophile community’s P2P torrents are beginning to fill up with files _claiming_ to be “The real” _Kiddie Diddling For Dummies_… but that are actually malware :D. ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2010, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/author-of-pedophile-book-arrested/564897/32 "2010-12-22T22:07:15Z")
> [@](#): > > If you write a book, if you sell that book, if you transmit that book to anyone in our jurisdiction, then we will investigate you and arrest, because our goal is protect the children," the sheriff said. I wonder why he didn’t include “if you buy that book…” Because when I saw the description, I was thinking that a parent concerned about pedophiles might want to buy that book to know what behaviours to look out for/guard against. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2010, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/author-of-pedophile-book-arrested/564897/33 "2010-12-22T22:16:10Z")
The real problem was his editor. The editor was of asian decent and messed up by putting the book in the friction section rather than non-friction… ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2010, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/author-of-pedophile-book-arrested/564897/34 "2010-12-22T23:57:39Z")
> [@kayT](#): > > Mentioning that there is a budgetary consideration is not exactly the same thing as saying that is the ONLY consideration. Why do you put words in the poster’s mouth? I’ll restate myself: Budgetary considerations should not enter into the equation at all when it comes to law enforcement enforcing the laws. If there’s 1 serial rapist who the police have to spend $10 million capturing and that money could have caught 50 check kiters, I’m fine with the $10m being spent on a serial rapist. I don’t know enough about this murky area of the law to know what should be done with this guy, if anything. What I do know is I find it really annoying that just because an individual disagrees with enforcement of a certain law in a certain circumstance they feel the need to go into the budgetary matter. Law enforcement is supposed to be about making society a safer, better place to live. Police bureaus are part of government precisely because we don’t want them to operate on a dollars and cents profit-focused mindset. When ever you run into police departments that _do_ operate that way, the results usually aren’t pretty (like small Arkansas towns giving people $200 speeding tickets and claiming they are going 85mp in their driveway.) ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2010, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/author-of-pedophile-book-arrested/564897/35 "2010-12-23T00:08:18Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > (like small Arkansas towns giving people $200 speeding tickets and claiming they are going 85mp in their driveway.) …and shooting the Fire Chief in a courtroom. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2010, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/author-of-pedophile-book-arrested/564897/36 "2010-12-23T00:16:57Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > …and shooting the Fire Chief in a courtroom. :rolleyes: Man, I forgot about that. What ever became of all that? ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2010, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/author-of-pedophile-book-arrested/564897/37 "2010-12-23T00:58:34Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > Man, I forgot about that. What ever became of all that? I’ve not heard anything on local news. The best I can Google is that the Fire Chief was charged with [assault.](http://reason.com/archives/2009/12/01/jericho-bile) ---
**Author:** ![simster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/simster/32/1047_2.png) [@simster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/simster)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2010, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/author-of-pedophile-book-arrested/564897/38 "2010-12-23T03:07:56Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > I’ve not heard anything on local news. The best I can Google is that the Fire Chief was charged with [assault.](http://reason.com/archives/2009/12/01/jericho-bile) what’d he do? attack the bullet? ---
**Author:** ![A\_Voice\_of\_Sanity](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@A\_Voice\_of\_Sanity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A_Voice_of_Sanity)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2010, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/author-of-pedophile-book-arrested/564897/39 "2010-12-23T03:26:58Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Obviously the world is better off this guy locked up if he did abuse children, but being arrested for writing a book is not a good thing. If he abused children, he should be punished for that. However one defense he could raise is that the book tells parents what to look for. After all, if you want to protect against bombs or to defuse them, you need to know how to build them first. There are movies and books that show some seriously evil things. From what little I know of it, the whole “Saw” series is sickeningly violent. And that’s not the only example. If this case can be proven, what about the bible? Will they ban that next and arrest the sellers? What about Mein Kampf? The Protocols of Zion? The US government used to publish books on improvising bombs and other deadly devices. Will Florida try to arrest the Army? ---
**Author:** ![A\_Voice\_of\_Sanity](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@A\_Voice\_of\_Sanity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A_Voice_of_Sanity)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2010, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/author-of-pedophile-book-arrested/564897/40 "2010-12-23T03:47:53Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > The _Anarchist’s Cookbook_ is the closest to that I can think of. > AFAIK, its author never got into any legal trouble, despite teaching people recipes for explosives, poisons, homemade weapons and how to commit 1970s style electronic fraud. Do you remember the [Hit Man](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hit_Man:_A_Technical_Manual_for_Independent_Contractors) case? > [@](#): > > In November 1997, a U.S. appeals court ruled 3-0 that Hit Man was not protected by the free speech/free press clause of the First Amendment and thus Paladin Enterprises could be held liable for a triple murder committed by one of its readers I fail to see how it is **not** protected speech. Further, it was written by a housewife with no actual expertise, she merely read other books. Also, the only part of the murder plot that failed was the book. Its purpose was supposed to be to help the killer avoid justice. It didn’t. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/author-of-pedophile-book-arrested/564897.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/author-of-pedophile-book-arrested/564897.md?page=3)