Wow, interesting issue. I don't think Zorthy's book examples are quite the same thing. If there were books like "How To Kill", then yeah, it'd be similar. Oh wait... there actually are books like that:
Kill Without Joy
Death Dealers Manual
Apparently those are ok, but a book on pedophilia not so much? I guess in our violence-desensitized world, killing is more accepted than pedophilia. After all, you can't turn on the news for 5 minutes without hearing about a murder somewhere. We almost tune it out after a while. Pedophilia, on the other hand, definitely catches our attention.
I'm not sure where the law falls on these kinds of issues. Does free speech really allow for these kinds of books to be distributed? I guess you can't stop someone from self-publishing a book, but it's legal for Amazon and other distributers to carry it? There are some interesting comments at:
http://gigaom.com/2010/11/10/amazon-kindle-pedophilia/
CNN interviewed the author:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/11/10/ama....guide/?hpt=T2
One of the choice quotes there: "Penetration is out. You can't do that with a child, but kissing and fondling I don't think is that big of a problem."
Wow...
Apparently there's some legal precedent in the matter:
http://www.spj.org/news.asp?ref=185
A U.S. appellate court found the publisher of the book "Hit Man" liable as an accessory to triple murder committed by one of its reader. I don't know what other cases have been tried for this sort of thing, but I'd like to think that someone found guilty of pedophilia and owning a copy of this guy's book would also hold the author liable as an accessory. Can Amazon be accountable too though? Dunno.
Anyway, crazy stuff. That author must have a death wish to print something like that.