Amazon Defends Pedophile Book

[ardeegee]

I haven't read all the posts so this may have been mentioned, but according to a video clip of the author I saw on TV, only one copy of the "book" (if you can call a 35 kilobyte file a book) was sold. If that is accurate, that one copy went to this guy:

http://iasshole.org/?p=2138

(Link found via yesterday's Boingboing story.)

[kennyc]

If only we could work up this kind of outrage to stop children starving in Africa and other nations. To stop the mutilation of women's genitals due to 'female circumcision', to prevent deaths due to aids....to provide for the aged and veterans living on our streets..........

[tiniree]

Originally Posted by desertgrandma

b*****t

We're talking a book that promotes sexual penetration of babies and children.

By an adult male.

And THEN suggests a light sentence for perpetrators.


If you aren't outraged by this......if you can't see the difference between something that "offends" and something that is totally unacceptable, you are part of the problem.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH! PERFECTLY PUT!!!

PS: To those of you who are upset because Amazon pulled it? Would you hire the men who purchased this book to babysit your child, niece, nephew or grandchildren?????

Marie

[Bilbo1967]

Originally Posted by kennyc

If only we could work up this kind of outrage to stop children starving in Africa and other nations. To stop the mutilation of women's genitals due to 'female circumcision', to prevent deaths due to aids....to provide for the aged and veterans living on the streets..........

OK, and if you can find books for sale at Amazon called How to Starve Children in Africa and other Nations, Female Circumcision; a Users Guide, Killing People with Aids or Ignoring the Aged and Veterans on the Streets that will become relevant to this thread.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

I haven't read all the posts so this may have been mentioned, but according to a video clip of the author I saw on TV, only one copy of the "book" (if you can call a 35 kilobyte file a book) was sold. If that is accurate, that one copy went to this guy:

http://iasshole.org/?p=2138

(Link found via yesterday's Boingboing story.)

Well it actually made it into the top 100 best sellers before Amazon canned it.

see the news article links I posted earlier in the thread or just google. It's everywhere.

[TGS]

Originally Posted by recluse

Right now, children are suffering an unspeakable nightmare at the hands of these creatures.
And you are letting it happen.

It might have been KennyC who made the point earlier - there is a world of difference between perpetrating an act and writing or reading a book about it. No one has ever been hurt by the Anarchist Cookbook - there are some criminal people or insane people who might use the Anarchist Cookbook to make a device to hurt someone. Deal with the criminals and insane people - the book didn't do it.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Bilbo1967

OK, and if you can find books for sale at Amazon called How to Starve Children in Africa and other Nations, Female Circumcision; a Users Guide, Killing People with Aids or Ignoring the Aged and Veterans on the Streets that will become relevant to this thread.

As will your post Mr. wanna be net cop. This is DIRECTLY related to the topic at hand in that people so easily overlook what is happen to kill and maim and harm people every day......EVERY FRIGGIN DAY. And then something stupid sh*t like this comes up and boycotts flare and people get outraged.

If we were to focus this outrage against the REAL problems plaguing the world we would be much better off.

[tammycravit]

Originally Posted by chilady1

I guess for some folks, if it has never happened to them or know of a child this has happened to, the empathy doesn't exist.

Originally Posted by chilady1

this book NEVER should have been available on Amazon. It sickens me to read some of the comments on this board.

I think I weighed in on this in the other thread, but here it is, with fuller disclosure. I am a survivor of a violent childhood sexual assault, committed against me at knifepoint when I was not quite 13. I volunteered as a rape crisis and child abuse prevention advocate for about 7 years, and was my agency's volunteer of the year one year. I now work as a paralegal, and one of my specialties is juvenile dependency law - that is, the law concerning children who are in foster care. In my professional life, I've seen and heard things far more horrifying than anything in that book. I've seen crime scene photos, read autopsy reports, watched videotaped interviews with abused and neglected children.

That said, although I think it ought to be immediately obvious to everyone that I find the content of this guy's book abhorrent, I nonetheless would absolutely defend his right to publish it. In the marketplace of ideas, the answer to hateful or abhorrent ideas isn't to ban the offending speech. Discuss the issues, sure. Raise countervailing arguments, absolutely. Counter "bad speech" with "good speech", you bet. But banning the "bad speech" is inimical to a free society, because once you draw the "bad speech" line where YOU want it, you're vulnerable to other people moving that line to where THEY want it.

And, for the record, I'd feel the same way even if the man who raped me had been READING this guy's book at the time. Because the reality is, the idea that pedophilia is okay is already widely expressed in places far beyond this book (in other books, message boards, chat rooms for pedophiles, etc.) That's the problem with ideas - once they're out of the bottle, you can't stuff them back in. Banning this book does nothing to eradicate the idea that pedophilia is okay, because eradicating an idea is impossible.

All you can do by banning a book with which you strongly disagree is make it okay for other people to ban other books with which they disagree. And banning this book doesn't make children one whit safer. Pedophiles existed, and abused children, long before this book existed, and they'll be around long after this book fades from the news.

If you want to truly help the vulnerable, don't waste your air advocating to ban this book. Go volunteer with your local rape crisis center. Make quilts for kids in the foster care system. Or write a book shining a light on the real problem of sexual abuse of children, like this person did.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Bilbo1967

OK, and if you can find books for sale at Amazon called How to Starve Children in Africa and other Nations, Female Circumcision; a Users Guide, Killing People with Aids or Ignoring the Aged and Veterans on the Streets that will become relevant to this thread.

How about "How to Profit from Aids in Africa" How about "Let's cut health care and social security to put more people on the street" How about "Let's us the corn for ethanol for our SUVs instead of shipping it to Asia and Africa" "how about Let's Invade the Middle East cause we need the oil" "How about.....

[Bilbo1967]

Originally Posted by kennyc

As will your post Mr. wanna be net cop. This is DIRECTLY related to the topic at hand in that people so easily overlook what is happen to kill and maim and harm people every day......EVERY FRIGGIN DAY. And then something stupid sh*t like this comes up and boycotts flare and people get outrages.

If we were to focus this outrage against the REAL problems plaguing the world we would be much better off.

Of course, you're right, it is entirely up to you to decide what is and isn't important in this world. How dare anybody else presume to have their own priorities

Earlier today, I got a bit angry that the coffee machine at work had no milk in it, and then, later, I got cross about the fact that one of my kids at school is being bullied. Clearly, I was wrong; I'll keep drinking black coffee and Tom will just have to get used to the scrapes and bruises

[rogue_red]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

Sometimes people don't know what the books are. Sometimes it's just someone who won't shut up about them. There are always rumblings about a movie; the thought of the trailers makes my skin crawl.

Where does the cut-off come in, though? I'll use the generic "Bad Thing" here to de-emotionalize this a bit: If a Bad Thing happens to an adult, you're saying that we don't need to prohibit books about that Bad Thing because the adult is capable of self-protection. Likewise, you say that if a Bad Thing happens to a child, we shouldn't expose that child to further examples of the Bad Thing. But what about if a Bad Thing happened to a child who is now an adult? Are they treated, in this case, as an adult or a child?

Just ask "Is the victim a child?"(present tense) - If the answer is 'yes' then the child needs protecting.

Inside every problem is a bigger problem struggling to get out.

Sometimes big problems are just little problems with an inflated sense of self.

Children need protecting
Adults get to do that for themselves

It doesn't matter what the bad thing is, who it happened to, who did it, where, when or why.
All that matters is that children are protected.

[tammycravit]

Originally Posted by rogue_red

All that matters is that children are protected.

OK, but here's the thing. I would absolutely agree that children need to be protected from sexual abuse by pedophiles. I doubt you'd get much disagreement there, at least among the members of this board. But, the piece you've left out of your analysis is how banning this book will actually make children any safer.

Do you honestly think there are people out there who feel like they might want to have sex with a child, who say to themselves, "Hmm, I wonder if I can find a book about having sex with children…nope, I didn't find this one book, so never mind."? Do you really, truly, believe that?

Do you seriously think this is the only piece of information out there that advocates sex with children? Do you honestly think that, in the absence of THIS SPECIFIC book, the pedophile will simply give up, instead of looking elsewhere to validate his feelings? For that matter, do you honestly think most pedophiles look for external validation in a society that almost universally condemns them? They abuse children despite a vocal and consistent message that their behavior is immoral and criminal.

So, I guess my question is this: Assuming that you're absolutely correct that children need to be protected from pedophiles, how is banning this book going to do that?

[Penforhire]

Back to "don't blame the book, blame the offender." The book doesn't make the act or aftermath worse. The offender does. Or are you suggesting victims might read this book? If so, I already agreed it should be placed in adults-only section.

Also, "Would you hire the men who purchased this book to babysit your child, niece, nephew or grandchildren?????" No, but what does that have to do with the price of tea in China? Do you imagine that by pulling this book from the shelves you have somehow reduced the worldwide number of pedophiles? If so, we disagree.

I am frightened by some of the "book bans are okay" attitudes here but I should not be surprised. The same attitudes do support our TSA's 'security theater' in airports, the Patriot Act (parts of it are objectionable, not all of it), and other erosions of our rights.

[rogue_red]

Originally Posted by kennyc

If only we could work up this kind of outrage to stop children starving in Africa and other nations. To stop the mutilation of women's genitals due to 'female circumcision', to prevent deaths due to aids....to provide for the aged and veterans living on our streets..........

You sound like my teenage daughter when I've caught her doing something wrong. Rather than deal with the situation at hand she'll point out every other breach of the rules by every other kid.

It's no wonder people sit on their arse and do nothing. Why vote unless I'm voting to change all the bad stuff in the world. Why stop and give a dollar to a homeless person when I can't feed Ethiopia. Why must it be all or nothing.
I can't save the world. Here is what I can do.
When I see something that I believe to be an offense to humanity I will get angry because it is human nature to preserve what we believe to be valuable. I'll put my anger to good use by discussing the situation so I have a clear understanding of the situation, what can or cannot be done to resolve the situation, and to find support, spread the news, and gather support for any proposed action.
Then I will take action. If I have decided the best course of action is petitioning then thats what I will do. If it's offering support to affected people then that's what I will do.

I am so glad I fought this and I'd do it again in a heart beat.

[tiniree]

I think, for me, what is all boils down to is this: We have a lot of crap going on in this world, that is going on because someone, somewhere said they were being persecuted, just so they could continue with the crap. I am tired of these "bottom dwellers" using the laws in such a way that allows them to continue with practices that no descent human should have to deal with. And to those of you who think that everyone, everywhere should be allowed to do whatever, whenever:

Poor baby! Deal with it! There are just some things that SHOULD NOT BE DONE!!!!