Book that tells you where is it legal to have sex with children

The difficulty with encouraging tighter censorship is that the more things that are banned for well-intentioned reasons (hate speech etc) the more the laws are used by those whose intentions are not good at all.

The arguments against this book are presumably that it incites people to rape and assault children. Thing is, most people do not want to rape children, and those that do are aware, or can easily find out without this particular book the best destinatios for sex tourism: such information is readily available. Someone who is, like the majority of people, horrified by the idea of sex tourism and raping children is not going to change his/her view just because of some badly-written ebook. However, trying to force Amazon into adapting their policies so that books can be banned if enough people complain about a particular book is a really bad, stupid idea, because what it will lead to in short order is arseholes trying to get important and useful books banned on the grounds that said books offend their nasty, narrow mind and/or insult their imaginary friends.

I'd say endorsing violence would fall under hate speech, as well, even if not as per an enticement.

Thanks for the explanation Helxi. So if you're inciting violence, that's where the line is drawn? (I know I'm talking very black and white here)

"Genuine question about free speech as I find the concept confusing. At what point does free speech become hate speech? Where is the line drawn between just airing vulgar views and actually being considered dangerous under law?"

Inciting violence, e.g. 'I don't like group X for reason A' vs 'The sooner we start killing Group X the better'.

"I struggle with the whole 'their country, their rules' thing. While I certainly agree we had no right to get involved in Vietnam, I think we had no right to leave Rwanda to struggle alone IYSWIM?"

Humanitarian aid for countries suffering from 'an act of God' is one thing, assuming it'll be used appropriately. Meddling with people who create their own disasters, unless that disaster threatens you in some way, is a different matter. I wouldn't send my child to die in someone else's country just because they've decided to defecate in it.

Just wanted to say this thread has really given me a lot to think about, challenging my own views on censorship and now I want to find a way to learn how many Australian 'child sex tourists' there are.

Genuine question about free speech as I find the concept confusing. At what point does free speech become hate speech? Where is the line drawn between just airing vulgar views and actually being considered dangerous under law?

I struggle with the whole 'their country, their rules' thing. While I certainly agree we had no right to get involved in Vietnam, I think we had no right to leave Rwanda to struggle alone IYSWIM?

Please be gentle I genuinely am trying to learn.

Solid, it wasn't being promoted as facts.

It was being promoted as endorsement of breaching our own country's laws. The blurb read as if it was promoting the idea of child sex tourism. Are you really comfortable with that? Really? I'd re-evaluate your feminist credentials if you are...

Yes, Solid - but what has that got to do with this thread?

There are a fair few countries where it is the custom for young girls to be forcibly married off to older men. That in itself is a bigger cause for concern than some nut publishing an ebook of facts.

SQ - I don't think anyone's said increasong ages of consent is a 'liberal value', but maybe I've missed something in this thread...
Eclectic - I'm not sure which country your referring to, but if Amazon is answerable to English state law (and I believe that to some extent it probably is), then that almost certainly imposes on it some responsibility WRT the material that it publishes/exhibits/sells.

Solid - no, I'm not arguing that any particular national, cultural or econominc group is solely responsible for raping children. However, it's well known that rich Westerners take advantage of people in desperately poor countries and one of the ways in which they do this is by raping children in those countries. It seems that the publication that this thread is about was specifically designed to help enable sex tourists to rape children and avoid prosecution.
And no, I'm not arguing that under no circumstances should Anglohone Westerners (or anyone else) 'interfere' with other countries' laws. That said, I do have a problem with imperialist 'civilising' attitudes from people who have little understand of the culture, traditions, historical and economic backgrounds, and legal systems of the countries that these outside 'reformers' are trying to change. (And I believe that Anglophone Westerners have shown fine form for doing this for several centuries now, often with horrific consequences.)
An absence of sex laws similar to those of e.g. the UK - or an absence of a legally defined 'age of consent' - is not necessarily indicative of 'barbaric customs' because an absence of a legally prescribed 'age of consent' isn't an automatic indicator of a culture where child rape is accepted or tolerated.
Your argument that campaigns that insist that other jurisdictions with cultural and legal landscapes very different from one's own should imitate one's own country's laws in order to protect those children from rape by sex tourists therefore seems quite simplistic.
You seem to be suggesting that Western sex tourists are raping children only in countries where there's already a 'custom' of sexually abusing children. This isn't the case. Sex tourists aren't taking advantage of 'barbaric customs', in the main, they're taking advantage of desperate poverty. To insist that the best way to address this is by insisting that these countries try and protect their chidren by imitating Western sex/child protection laws seems naive, short-sighted and arrogant.

Is it the responsibility or amazon or the responsibility of the country and government to have laws to protect children?

I don't think that increasing ages of consent is a liberal value is it?

It's a lot of things but that's not the first that springs to mind.

Also agree with SGB that many men who are not "paedophiles" are more than happy to travel to a country where they can easily procure eg a 10yo girl or boy.

LastMango: Are you arguing that in those countries with low (or no) ages of consent, rape of children is only carried out by rich Westerners? Or just that Anglophone Westerners should refrain from interfering in other countries' laws even when those laws are barbaric, just because it's wrong to interfere with other countries' customs?

Curious that some posters are arguing that 'we' (Anglophone Westerners?) should be campaigning against other countries' laws (or absence of them) to try and protect children in those countries against wealthy Anglophone Western men from going to those countries, taking advantage of their poverty and raping their children.
So Anglophone Westerners can congratulate themselves for their liberal values (and free speech) while shrieking at other countries to get themselves together to legislate against opportunistic crimes commited by rich Westerners?

I had a quick look on the ages on Wikipedia. Interesting how in Iran, Kuwait and Pakistan all sex outside of marriage is illegal regardless of age or consent.

I agree with SGB. Censorship is not a good thing for feminism or women's rights (which is the section we are in).

Censorship is not going to help anyone. Instead of sweeping what we don't like under the carpet countries who have low ages of consent for sex should actually be exposed.

So it's now Amazon's fault that pedophiles rape children?

Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill.

Paedophiles travel abroad all the time to rape children - they can do it for a small amount of ££ in some countries while procuring a child in the UK is much more dangerous.

This is common knowledge surely.

I agree with solidgoldbrass. Accusing the book of "promoting the rape of children" sounds a bit libellious when it is simply a book of facts.

Amazon removed the page so are you happy? Or should we go and look for more books we don't like and ask Amazon to remove those pages as well?

I dare say if a predator did want to commit an act of violence against a child he wouldn't go to the trouble of buying a book and travelling to another country anyway. Pedophiles generally don't seem to care too much about laws (if they did we wouldn't keep hearing about them on the news).

Just because it was available on amazon for a short while doesn't mean that there's actually anyone who's bought it. There are heaps of dead data lumps available on the kindle store, which are never sold at all.

There's no real cost involved in making an e-book, there's no physical items which come with the whole problem of making, storing, shipping them, that's why there's so many ebooks are being published. There's no huge outlay so if you publish without selling anything you don't make a crippling loss

Other than that I agree with sgb

Given that it is information that is already freely available on the Internet, I wonder if having it as a downloadable e book on Amazon was a police sting operation...

On principle I agree with SGB re - censorship.

Good point, bluebus - I wonder if the 'author' was thoughtful enough to include that point in the information in his 'book'. (Even if he did, I guess it wouldn't pose a problem to non-British 'consumers', though, would it?)