Amazon's Pedophile Encounter: Where's The Line?

When you're the "world's largest bookseller," everything you do becomes Big News.  This week, Amazon had a bit of a kerfluffle which they literally could not win.

In Part 1, someone noticed that Amazon was carrying a self-published ebook by a pedophile.  This wretched little screed was all about handy tips and tricks on how to be a pedophile without getting caught.  Gross, right? 

Within minutes of this discovery, half of the internet was baying for blood.  Nothing gets people going like a perceived misdoing on the part of Amazon. 

Calls for boycotts and angry letters of protest went flying like… well, like a lot of upset people had just found out that Amazon (in their view) supports pedophilia.

Amazon quickly yanked the book.  And in Part 2, the other half of the internet now blames Amazon for censorship, for quashing that poor beleaguered child rapist's right to Free Speech and Liberty and a lot of other crazy-ass flag-waving nonsense.

If this incident proves anything, it's that everyone apparently hates Amazon, and is just waiting for an excuse to let the rage out.  For many people, Amazon can do no right.  Amazon is second only to Microsoft in both the hate it engenders, and its ubiquity.  (The relationship between those two factors I leave as an exercise for the reader.)

The Free Speech hardcore Libertarian crowd points out - and rightfully so - that banishing this one poxy ebook from Amazon will hardly stop pornography.  And that buying and reading that book (gag) won't turn someone into a pedophile.  That nothing, essentially, is accomplished by this measure.

I find this a somewhat puzzling argument.  What is accomplished by this measure is: Amazon will no longer earn a profit off of child rape.  (At least in the case of that one particular ebook.) 

As for the censorship issue, a lot of people seem to have confused Amazon's refusal to sell something with  the actions of a totalitarian government.  But Amazon is not the government.  It is not, like public schools and libraries, a publicly funded institution.  It's a store, and every store in the world chooses what they feel is appropriate to sell.

If you walk into a Borders, you won't find pedophilia books in the How-To section.  The same goes for Barnes and Noble, and Walmart, and Safeway, and Toys 'R Us, and I dare say your local indie bookstore as well. 

Amazon is not the law.  Just because Amazon won't sell it, that doesn't mean that this sick [redacted] isn't still free to publish it.  (For certain values of "Publish," meaning "Print to PDF.")  As I understand it, everything that the book advocates is against the law (and disgusting), but that doesn't mean it's against the law for the "author" to write or publish it.  I has a free speech, and he does, too.  That's kinda how that works.

Amazon's actions are being equated to that of totalitarian governments like Iran and North Korea.  In reality, Amazon's actions are more like that of a shopping mall.  Amazon.com is private property, and if they don't want something (like pro-pedophilia hand-outs) being shopped around on their property, then it is their right to ban it. 

I agree that censorship is bad.  But Amazon refusing to sell a pedophilia "How-To" manual is not censorship.