And here’s a follow-up to our story about the self-published pedophilia guide that Amazon first defended, then pulled from publication. As TeleReader Brian/AnemicOak pointed out, Colorado police arrested the author of the book, Philip Greaves, after detectives in Florida ordered and received a copy of the book from him. Greaves will be extradited from Colorado to face obscenity charges in Polk County, Florida.
[Polk County Sheriff Grady] Judd said he was frustrated that Greaves’ book was protected under freedom of speech laws, even though it was created "specifically to teach people how to sexually molest and rape children."
"There may be nothing that the other 49 states can do, but there is something that the state of Florida can do … to make sure we prosecute Philip Greaves for his manifesto," Judd said.
Under other circumstances, I might say it would be troubling that someone could be extradited from one part of the country to face prosecution based on the standards of another part of the country. That immediately summons up images of, say, someone who publishes gay porn on the Internet from the West Coast being prosecuted in the Bible Belt, and this very thing has been a concern in a number of obscenity cases since the Internet began to become widely used.
But this is not that kind of case, where something considered all right in one part of the country is an outrage in another. This particular type of behavior should be an outrage everywhere. And it’s not the case of the manga collector whose wide-ranging collection included some obscene hand-drawn images (and consequently got a 6 month jail sentence), either.
This is someone who produced an instruction book covering all aspects of how to carry on an illicit pedophilic affair. The most I can say for him is that he has a history of mental illness, and must still hot have been quite right in the head to have written and published that book—certainly nobody in his right mind would have thought he could get away with it, if nothing else. (Though to be fair, he wouldn’t be the first self-publishing author to think he could self-publish something illegal without repercussions.) Perhaps he can plead insanity and get the help he so obviously needs.
