“Keep Calm and Rape On” was one of the slogans found on T-shirt ready for sale on Amazon.com. While the product was quickly removed from the website, it created widespread anger.

According to Solid Gold Bomb, the company who produces the shirts, these T-shirts were generated by accident. The founder of the company, Michael Fowler, said in his apology that the shirts were created automatically through a computer generated word list for their “Keep Calm…” parody series. This series is based off of what Fowler says is a wartime slogan intended to motivate Britons to keep their chins up.

Fowler said the production of these prints relied on computer based dictionaries, online education systems and verb lists.

“I [then] generated word lists that were called using simple scripting methods to generate image based art of the modified slogans,” Fowler said.

“These were subsequently scripted to position themselves on T-shirts and the associated product data was derived simply from the product name and the 16-word combinations like “on” and “off” and “him” or “her” and so forth.”

Fowler explained that these combinations either work or they don’t and are usually non-offensive. The examples he gave were “dream on” and “dance off.” However, “rape on” and “hit her” slipped through the cracks and both Solid Gold Bomb and Amazon failed to notice until it was too late.

While the effects of this poorly worded slogan found its way into Twitter feeds and news articles, Amazon.com removed the items as soon as they were told and Fowler gave a heartfelt apology.

“I am sorry,” Fowler simply stated in the beginning of his March 2 apology.

Fowler continues in his apology to take sole responsibility for this incident and promises it will never happen again. He also said that the T-shirts were never printed and are not sitting in a stock room somewhere waiting to be shipped. The order is only filled if it is placed, which none were.

The Internet is a place where, unfortunately, when mistakes happen everyone has access to them. This mistake however, should be seen as an accident and not as someone maliciously trying to generate a shirt that would offend people. The problem was not only Solid Gold Bomb’s computer system, but the fact that Amazon.com allowed it to be on their website for an extended period of time.

Amazon.com has been called out before for this sort of thing.

In 1999, an article on CNET news reports finding weapons and porn for sale on Amazon.com. Amazon spokeswoman at the time Sharon Greenspan replied saying they are doing everything they can to not let these types of things be sold on their website.

Amazon’s policy for adding items on their website is clearly stated in their participation agreement, which tells the user what is prohibited and what is allowed.

While Amazon has these terms, people still tend to neglect them and sell prohibited items anyway. With a huge amount of users on a website that offers so many items it can be hard to police every product. However, Amazon should think about the possibility of raising their membership price in order to keep harmful items off the site.

With tweets containing #amazonfail, the blame is going more to Amazon.com than Solid Gold Bomb. With a past dabbling in weapons and porn being sold on their site, and now the selling of

“Rape On” shirts, Amazon may need to actively tighten their policy or add another step to the selling process in order to avoid future mishaps.