Amazon removes paedophilic e-book amid online uproar


11 Nov 2010

Amazon.com has come under fire from numerous groups for posting a guidebook to paedophilia for sale on its store.

The self-published guide is an e-book that gives advice to paedophiles and has generated uproar from users threatening to boycott the store.

The e-book in question – The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-Lover’s Code of Conduct – sparked up among Amazon and the Twitter community, with the majority of users leaving comments in which they threatened to stop using the service unless the book was removed.

Amazon has since removed the e-book, which was available on the Kindle, from its store, even though the e-book page still exists. When the link is clicked, a message reads: “We’re sorry. The web address you entered is not a functioning page on our site”.

Amazon promotes authors to self-publish their work but authors are requested to adhere to a set of guidelines that ban offensive materials set out by the e-tailer.

In the e-book itself, the author, named as Philip R Greaves II, claims paedophiles are a misunderstood section of society and his e-book offers them guidance and advice on how to stay on the right side of the law.

Inexplicably, the book had managed to break into the Amazon top 100, which also includes Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth, and former US president George W Bush’s autobiography, Decision Points.