Why not? This one did.
Nobody’s forcing Amazon to sell it. Nobody’s forcing people to do business with them. I don’t patronize a lot of stores for a whole lot less than selling pedophile promotional material. Many of them have gone out of business.
If I like a business I tell them what I don’t like about them. If I don’t then it’s there problem to figure it out. There is one business in my area that went from a local to a national chain and in the process their service declined to the point I will push my car to a competitor rather then do business with them.
I will not support a business that profits from the promotion of pedophilia. It is a function of making socially responsible purchases.
It had sold exactly one copy before the offenderati started their campaign. Why would he have published any more when he wasn’t selling the ones he already had?
One too many, if you ask me. But that’s not the point – it’s whether or not Amazon can be counted on by the deve-set for hosting their How To Diddle a Kid books. It appears they’ve decided not to be.
It’s not like they put it on an end-cap. Really what Amazon did was provide an open publishing platform and a venue for self-published authors to sell their crappy books directly to readers with e-readers. Apparently that’s more freedom than many people can handle.
I’m with you, but only to the extent of businesses which exclusively cater to those kind of people.
For example, there’s an online DVD store (can’t recall the name) which sells many hard to find foreign films – titles like Kes, Pixote, The Year My Voice Broke, etc. – which are impossible to find in Region 1. Unfortunately, they were also a distributor for the aforementioned Baikal Films, as well as other dodgy videos which obviously catered towards pedophiles. I would never patronize that kind of business, nor should anyone else.
But to boycott Amazon over a single book is silly, IMO.
Well maybe, but the boycott worked.
Exactly. It’s basicly… would you allow a cult leader to publish stuff for other cult leaders that tells them their beliefs are normal and that b/c of that they have carte blanche to do all the horrifying stuff that a stereotypical cult leader would do?
How did the boycott work? The book sold more copies and garnered infinitely more interest than it would have had there been no publicity-gathering boycott. Interested parties are now more likely to know the author’s name, that he writes this material, that he may write more in the future, etc…
If one’s goal is that the book in question attracts the smallest possible audience, then I can’t see any metric by which the boycott succeeded.
They pulled the book relatively quickly. If you think in the age of the internet that the author isn’t easy to find you are sorely mistaken. Porn has shifted dramatically from physical media to digital which is the form in which the book was being sold.
Update: Writer of pedophile’s ‘hot-to’ arrested
Unfortunately, he’s only been arrested for shipping the book. Or maybe that’s ‘fortunately’, for we all know what we thought he would end up getting arrested for. I’m still not sure what the over/under is on that one.
I meant, “how-to.”
Honest mistake. And probably not *even *a mistake.
I wonder how many books were purchased by police departments? He could be in court for a long time.
I wondered if this would happen. Even while Amazon was defending the decision to sell the book, they were clear that they wouldn’t sell anything they believed to be illegal. Since it struck me as a close call legally, I thought that would have been an easy out for Amazon!
Of course, I actually doubt that the book is illegal. From what little I understand of the law, you have to actually be pretty direct in instigating illegal acts to fall outside the 1st Amendment. “Here’s how someone could build a nuclear device and here is how someone could escape detection doing so and here are several reasons why someone might want to construct nuclear weapons in their home or office and set them off in populated places in the US,” is probably ok if I don’t intend to actually encourage anyone. “Go build a nuclear weapon and blow stuff up!” is probably not ok, if I have reason to believe someone might actually do it because I told them to, even if I didn’t tell them how or why. At least I think so.
But we’ll see what happens in Fla. I wouldn’t be too surprised if a prosecutor can convince a judge and jury the book fell on the wrong side of that line. And that’s just for inciting a crime. I’m not even going to speculate on the obscenity aspect.
It looks like they’re trying to make an obscenity charge. I don’t see how that could possiby stick.
I thought that too, like it’s Fanny Hill all over again. If theres a Shakespeare quote in it somewhere this’ll be dismissed.
I would venture a guess that they don’t give a damn if it sticks. They’re after warrants that will let them search his house and computers. The “child porn trafficker” charges are waiting in the wings and those they can make stick…
Good point, Zakalwe. I wonder if that’s a legitimate tactic, legally. I mean, the charges they filed presumably aren’t patently unreasonable, just unlikely to result in conviction. They have to show probable cause that he violated an obscenity law, and presumably did so. If they don’t actually intend to pursue the obscenity charge, are they acting in bad faith even if they believe him to be factually guilty?
Further wouldn’t you want to know just how people might try to molest your kids?
If you have an accurate manual of how people might try to molest them then you also have a good manual for protecting them. The enemy’s battle strategies if you will.
Computer security is full of information about how to break into systems. The good guys love this info just as much as the bads, because it helps the goods resist the bads.
I already know how to protect them.