Amazon Responds

Amazon Web Services makes a strong argument that government pressure had nothing to do with their decision to boot WikiLeaks, but rather clear violations of their terms of service:

AWS does not pre-screen its customers, but it does have terms of service that must be followed. WikiLeaks was not following them. There were several parts they were violating. For example, our terms of service state that “you represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the content… that use of the content you supply does not violate this policy and will not cause injury to any person or entity.” 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.

Fair enough. But so would AWS likewise refuse to provide hosting to The New York Times or The Guardian? Will Amazon refuse to sell books containing text from these leaked diplomatic cables?

★ Friday, 3 December 2010