They were marketing a book called The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure. It almost makes me sick even reading the title and the content is even worse. The most offensive thing is after many, many complaints, Amazon kept the book on sale on the basis of free speech. Click for more details if you wish.
As we say in Australia, that's foul. That's rank. That's disgusting.
We also only have an implied right to Freedom of Speech in our constitution (thanks for that Brian politics lecturer. I did take something in), so that defense doesn't work over here. In my opinion, there are several good reasons why you cannot have fluid free speech
1. You may harm someone's reputation eg. Mrs Woog is a cult leader
2. You may encourage people to do illegal things, such as is the case with a 'how-to' guide for pedophiles.
3. You may go outside fair use and infringe upon someone's copyright.
4. Privacy. For example releasing medical records that confirm SawHole has deformed breasts. Stalking celebs is also outlawed in France becauseof the Princess Diana tragedy.
Now I am not saying we should be all locked up for mocking the Teabaggers in the US or NRL players in Australia. Knock yourself out writing things that are offensive, but when it has the potential to hurt kids no way. I draw the line there. Free speech is admirable but to have such a admirable thing held up as a defence by a greedy corporation is wrong.
In my days before starting my internship at Woogsworld, I had a job where I held corporations to account. I then took another job helping corporations be accountable. I can say with a degree of authority that Amazon just has its head up its virtual arsehole. Free speech is just an excuse. They will sell to anyone, even pedophiles. All they cared about was keeping the virtual cash registers going. If they are responsible corporate citizens, they would have printed out the names and addresses of every person who bought that book and given it to the cops.
But no. They just kept on selling. Must be grand to be the pedophile book site of choice.
Not-So-Kind-Regards to you Amazon
SawHole
Mrs Woog adds update
As of yesterday, Amazon.com has removed this title from sale due to a huge negative response on blogs, Twitter and Facebook. Read here.
social media = not a waste of time.
