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Wikileaks calls Amazon a liar over government pressure
WHISTLEBLOWING WEBSITE Wikileaks has called Amazon a "liar" over alleged government pressure to boot it out of Amazon's cloud service.
Wikileaks posted a statement on its Twitter account late last Friday that was couched in no uncertain terms.
"Amazon's press release does not accord with the facts on public record. It is one thing to be cowardly. Another to lie about it," said the tweet.
That was not merely an insinuation or inference, but an accusation that Amazon was untruthful in its attempt to extract itself from the storm of political controversy whipped up by Wikileaks.
Wikileaks retreated to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud after it was subjected to a denial of service attack that took its website offline. This was not meant to be a permanent solution but Amazon's infrastructure was strong enough to handle the attack.
However, the online bookseller booted Wikileaks off its cloud sooner than expected, invoking the excuse that Wikileaks violated its terms and conditions rather than admitting to government pressure.
The outfit's terms of service state, "you represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the content... [and] that use of the content you supply does not violate this policy and will not cause injury to any person or entity."
In other words, Amazon was alleging that Wikileaks didn't own the rights to the 250,000 classified documents that it intended to publish. But that doesn't hold water because they are US government documents and therefore they are the property of the entire US population.
Amazon didn't want to get embroiled in controversy over Wikileaks' revelations but now it has to either silently duck the issue or publicly defend its action. µ
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Amazon just doesn't want to be tainted by this Wikileaks debacle. They are a business, not champions of those who think they're in the right releasing illegally obtained documents, and certainly don't want their networks hammered by one problematic site.
@giovanna: I don't know what country you live in, but if newspapers are simply regurgitating "manipulated information" by "dinossaurs (sic) in pin striped suits" the blame falls squarely on the newspapers for not doing proper *journalism* as they should. Wikileaks has also not produced "truth" so much as verified already known facts that are simply not *said* at official levels.
Section 105 of the US Copyright Law states "copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government..."
And while releasing doubtfully "classified" documents is illegal, you are free to receive them, publish them, even line your pets litter box with them...
I'm greatly confused by your assertion that Wikileaks is allowed to distribute the content based on Amazon's terms. Please tell me how a non-government entity owns the rights to confidential documents. Especially one based outside of the US.
By your logic, a US citizen can go and drive tank whenever they see fit, or a shareholder in KFC could distribute their recipes as desired. If so, then it's time for me to buy stock in Coca-cola.
Nice try though.
http://wikileaks.ch/support.html
i am an avid user of amazon and am just getting in contact with all the controversy and problems Wikileaks is enduring for being in the side of truth. Since the beginning of newspapers we have been bombarded with manipulated information dictating how we should think, who is good and bad, in the interest of a handful of 'dinossaurs in pin striped suits'. Wikileaks is breaking the ground and shaping a more equalitarian world. How can I support them??? Does any one know?