Why does Amazon promote dog fighting by selling dog fighting and cockfighting books, magazines, and other paraphernalia?
Amazon doesn’t “promote” dog fighting or cockfighting by selling books about them any more than it promotes murder by selling stories about Jack the Ripper. America is a free country, and if people want to write books and magazines about touchy subjects, and people want to read about them, they can do so. If someone reads a book about dog fighting, does a dog magically die? If someone reads about cockfighting while enjoying some delicious Popeyes Chicken and Biscuits, are they going to go out and torture animals after dinner? Obviously not. Amazon is not responsible for what you choose to read. If it’s legal to write it, sell it, and read it, Amazon should be able to sell it, and you shouldn’t try to stop them. Otherwise, when someone finds something you enjoy offensive or disturbing, it’s just a short complaint and you can’t buy the books you want any more. I hate the idea of dog fighting and cock fighting. I think they’re disturbing and cruel and they damage the people doing them as
It puts Amazon in an extremely awkward position once they start to censor anything. If it’s legal, they carry it. If it’s not, they don’t. Once they start censoring anything, they’ll have to censor everything. This precedent would have them deluged with letters from people who found everything from nudity to Harry Potter offensive. They already are so deluged, but now they have a single reply: we don’t censor anything. Censorship is a very dangerous precedent to set. We live in a country with freedom to speak, even odiously. For some things the government will step in, when the speech encourages illegal behavior, and it’s the government you need to complain to, not Amazon. And not just the federal government, but your state government. If they pass local laws banning the sale of such magazines, Amazon will have to listen. Even if it’s legal in some places, tracking local laws forbidding shipment will be too much trouble and they’ll stop.
