Amazon Japan employee investigated over child porn

the book appeared to be child pornography, but the employee relisted it on the online store

I am curious about the employee's motivation for relisting the illegal item. Did he do it because he would profit from its sales? Or because he felt like that is what his supervisors expected him to do? Or was it just sheer laziness in that delisting the item would be more trouble than relisting it?

Whatever the reason, he is culpable. Still, it seems likely that management was complicit as well (both in Japan and headquarters in Seattle) , at the very least in terms of being aware that these sorts of items were available through their website.

I am glad the police finally decided to crack down on this, and I hope they go after Rakuten and Yahoo Japan who were also knowingly involved in these crimes.

People have been talking about Amazon selling this kind of stuff for years and years... and now they try to pin it on one single rogue temp employee? Talk about scapegoating.

Go to their e-book store, there's lots of literary porn there, very graphic.

"A customer who purchased the book online returned it and complained that the book appeared to be child pornography..."

Ha! Wow. So this customer wants young girls naked who look under 18, but he draws the line at them actually being under 18. And then he takes a moral stand and returns it and makes a formal complaint.

That's a pervert with conviction.

Japan investigated over child porn

A more accurate headline.

Porn is secretly Amazon's biggest seller.

So this customer wants young girls naked who look under 18, but he draws the line at them actually being under 18. And then he takes a moral stand and returns it and makes a formal complaint.

Your premise doesn't logically make sense. Unless it specifically stated they were under 18 in the book, he wouldn't have known for sure that they were under 18. Therefore if he was just looking for girls who look under 18, he would have been satisfied. Since he returned the book, he wasn't looking for girls who look under 18. Otherwise he would have kept the book, as it would have met his desires.

I'm confused. Did the the guy list the item as a normal seller would on Amazon, or did he use his position at Amazon to list and then re-list it?

Good job! But.... what about the forgotten victims? These "girls", operative word "girls"... where are they now? I mean, are they runaways? Are they abducted? Are they non citizens? What happened to the child victims?

Ha! Wow. So this customer wants young girls naked who look under 18, but he draws the line at them actually being under 18. And then he takes a moral stand and returns it and makes a formal complaint.

Yeah, I wonder what drove him to buy that particular book in the first place. What porn genre?

he was probably looking for specifically 18 years and 1 month... some people are very particular with their fetishes. but, in Japan .. I am really not sure how you could tell the difference

he was probably looking for specifically 18 years and 1 month

I think you're probably right based on the absolutely no information whatsoever to back up that theory.

-3 Good Bad gogogoMAR. 20, 2015 - 10:08AM JST Porn is secretly Amazon's biggest seller.

i bet that is soooo not true.

hell state he was drunk at the time and doesnt recall, another slap on the wrist and sent home. how dare gaijin complain about Japanese freedom of expression

i bet that is soooo not true.

Not sure about porn, but their sex related "goods" are actually a big seller. Possibly because they keep it somewhat separate, and don't display pictures of such goods when you are looking for normal household items. Unlike Rakuten..

I've always wondered what constitutes child porn. For example, if a female student who is under 18 sends nude photos of herself (sexting) and one of the students that she sends the photo to is 18, can he get into trouble for child porn if they find this image on his cell phone? There could easily be a 17-year-old student among a high school student body and she could distribute these photos to college students (if she is part of a college release program in high school) and college classmates would have no idea she was under 18. What happens if someone takes artistic nude photos and a female misrepresents her age and even provides a fake ID? Does the photographer still face charges of child porn even if he didn't know she was a minor and was deceived by her? What about someone who surfs a porn site and a producer misrepresented the age of the person in the video. With how the law works now, you can get into trouble for possession or receiving child porn even if you realize afterwards that it wasn't adults and deleted the video or photos. I don't condone child porn, but it seems that there are a lot of ways you could easily get into trouble with child porn even if you aren't a pedophile. And then you will also have to register as a sex offender if convicted.

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http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depictions_of_nudity

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http://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Nude_children_in_art

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http://www.popcenter.org/problems/child_pornography/

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This article is about the newest way that pedophiles are being trapped: http://m.ibtimes.com/sweetie-20-software-uses-virtual-girl-lure-child-porn-offenders-out-dark-1848724

Whoever sells this stuff is just a middle-man. Will they go after the publisher and whoever made the book?

A customer who purchased the book online returned it and complained that the book appeared to be child pornography, but the employee relisted it on the online store, they added.

Not surprising. Just because one person decides something is child pornography doesn't mean it actually is. Until the government defines what "pornography" actually is without including weasel phrases like "in the view of rational adults" and such, you're going to have incidents like this happen. Lock down exactly what "pornography" is and many of these "criminals" will disappear due to clarity of the law.

Outside vendors and collectors can sell items (new, used, or out of stock) inside Amazon's online store, normally at a cheaper price unless it's a rare item. It's the same process like Ebay. I am assuming that the Amazon employee was trying to sell this book from his own private collection since they said he re-listed the returned item.

AFP: The temporary distribution worker, who was dispatched to work at Amazon Japan Logistics, an affiliate of the Japanese arm of Amazon.com, was in charge of product management and distribution ...

They put a temp in charge of product management and distribution?

And he went and got investigated for distribution of child porn through company channels?

No one looking good here.

BTW,

Jiji Press news agency ... reported

Is that a Chinese-owned news agency?