Amazon Issues Statement re Dropping Wikileaks

Source:  http://mashable.com/2010/12/02/why-amazon-dropped-wikileaks/Why Amazon Dropped WikiLeaks

by Jolie O'Dell

Amazon has issued a statement explaining why it dropped WikiLeaks from its web servers.
Yesterday, we learned that the controversial whistleblower site had been kicked off Amazon Web Services (AWS). The company’s actions were praised by U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, the chairman of the House Security Committee, who said Amazon’s choice was “the right decision and should set the standard for other companies Wikileaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material.”
But Amazon is insisting it didn’t remove WikiLeaks because of political pressure — or because of a recent series of DDoS attacks on the site.
“AWS does not pre-screen its customers, but it does have terms of service that must be followed,” reads a company statement. WikiLeaks was not following them.”
The terms of service state that content supplied by users must be owned by the user, or the user must have the right to publish it. The terms further state that published content should not “cause injury to any person.”
In a strongly worded section of its statement, Amazon goes a step beyond stating that WikiLeaks violated the terms of service, however.

It’s clear that WikiLeaks doesn’t own or otherwise control all the rights to this classified content. Further, it is not credible that the extraordinary volume of 250,000 classified documents that WikiLeaks is publishing could have been carefully redacted in such a way as to ensure that they weren’t putting innocent people in jeopardy.
Human rights organizations have in fact written to WikiLeaks asking them to exercise caution and not release the names or identities of human rights defenders who might be persecuted by their governments.

WikiLeaks is now being hosted by Bahnhof, a company with servers in France and Sweden. This particular company has some of the coolest-looking data centers we’ve ever seen, and they apparently have no problem with hosting WikiLeaks’ content.
What do you think of Amazon’s language in this statement? Should WikiLeaks be exercising more discretion when publishing sensitive documents? Let us know your opinion in the comments.

Source:  http://mashable.com/2010/12/02/why-amazon-dropped-wikileaks/