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Amazon Boycott

1 reply

Rhubarb · 16/05/2006 13:43

For those who might have missed this on the parenting threads.

Amazon are stocking books that encourage child abuse and paedophilia and refuse to take these books off their shelves. One of the books is called 'No Greater Joy' by Michael Pearl and it advocates whipping babies and children, quote "Many people are using a section of ¼ inch plumber’s supply line as a spanking instrument. It will fit in your purse or hang around you neck. You can buy them for under $1.00 at Home Depot or any hardware store. They come cheaper by the dozen and can be widely distributed in every room and vehicle. Just the high profile of their accessibility keeps the kids in line." This is for babies as well as children! Their website \link{http://www.nogreaterjoy.org/index.php?id=59&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=247&tx_ttnews[backPID]=7\here} says it all.

The other two books promote paedophilia and they are called 'Understanding Loved Boys and Boylovers' by David L Riegel and 'Pedophilia - The Radical Case' by Tom O'Carrol, both authors are members of the 'childlove' movement, a paedophilia sympathisers club.

I've emailed Amazon and got a standard computer generated reply in response blabbing on about censorship. Of course they would do, they don't want to lose money over this. Mumsnet have dropped Amazon as one of their sponsors and I've closed my account. I ask all of you to contact Amazon and do the same. I'm also contacting all the parenting sites I can think of, registering and posting all of the above on their forums, if you are member of another parenting site, please do the same.

Thanks everyone.

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MNHQ

JustineMumsnet · 17/05/2006 23:56

Here's why we've chosen to remove our affiliation with Amazon: As a parenting website, run by and for Mums, we quite simply cannot stomach partnering with an organisation that stocks and promotes a book that advocates beating babies. Like many of you we had a visceral reaction to this particular issue and it's as simple as that really. How can we affiliate with a business that makes money out of promoting and legitimising a message like this?

The fact that our actions may not matter a jot to Amazon - the affiliate revenue we get from sales is fairly meaningful to us but undoubtedly meaningless to them - is neither here nor there in our opinion. Nor is the fact that there are no doubt "morally worse" books out there.

We strongly believe in freedom of speech at Mumsnet and completely accept that books like this one have every right to be published but Mumsnet doesn't have to partner with retailers who chose to stock those books. As Blu says, other booksellers choose not to. But having said that, in our view it's a bit too easy for Amazon - who can use the fact that we are all (quite rightly) wary of censorship - to entirely disassociate themselves from the notion of corporate responsibility. What this issue has made us realise is that we do think businesses - even big American ones - should draw a line somewhere.

Of course there are powerful arguments on both sides (freedom of speech vs moral responsibility etc), many of which have been rehearsed here and on other threads. In some ways we'd love to be convinced that we're being foolish and have missed the point (which of course is entirely possible Grin)- not many other retailers are as simple to partner with as Amazon and we could do with the revenue. And we have to admit that we've not read the entire work in question - sorry we just can't bring ourselves to buy it and read it right now. So please do continue to give us your thoughts on this.
Thanks MNHQ

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