After hundreds of complaints were posted to Facebook and Twitter, Amazon.com quietly removed from its Kindle store a guide to pedophilia called “The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover’s Code of Conduct.”
At first Amazon stood buy its decision to allow the self-published book to appear in its store, saying they “support the right of every individual to make their own purchasing decisions.” But now today, the book is gone. With no further word of explanation from Amazon.
What I’d like to know and haven’t been able to find out is whether Amazon has also deleted the book from the Kindles of the thousands of people who bought it. That’s one they did with an unlicensed electronic edition of, ironically, George Orwell’s 1984 last year. I love my Kindle, but it is one of scarier possibilities lurking behind this model of electronic publishing: that one company can decide that I am no longer allowed to read the book a purchased from them.
Writing a haiku
Containing the word “pedophile”
Is no easy feat.
A guide to child love?!
What did they hope to kindle
But the mob’s torches?
C’mon Amazon!
What would a real bookstore do?
Not carry the book.
