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Comment by abyssknight | Hacker News Reader

Sorry, but all this crap is getting on my nerves. If it were my business I would have done the same thing. I don't care what your views on Wikileaks are, losing money and being shutdown due to violation of the Espionage Act is not something that sits well with investors, and would certainly affect the business model. If you don't like it, start a competing service in a country that isn't negatively impacted by the leaks. Good luck with that.

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I don't agree. If there is a company that could stand up against such threats of government, it would be Amazon. I would have loved to see this played out in court.

Although I do understand that for Amazon's business it's better to minimize all risk, it would have been nice if they stood up for free speech.

I believe that even when you're operating a business you should still have ethics. Perhaps even more so. There lots of shady things you could do to lower your expenses without actually breaking a law. But you still wouldn't do them, right? Because you feel they are WRONG. Why didn't Amazon see this as a wrong thing to do?

Because it was the right thing to do, in their eyes and many others, and they have every right to do it. Rebecca MacKinnon enunciates this well here: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/12/02/mackinnon.wikileak...

While Rebecca does discuss that they have the right to do it, I think you're distorting her point.

"While Amazon was within its legal rights, the company has nonetheless sent a clear signal to its users: If you engage in controversial speech that some individual members of the U.S. government don't like -- even if there is a strong case to be made that your speech is constitutionally protected -- Amazon is going to dump you at the first sign of trouble....

The future of freedom in the internet age may well depend on whether we the people can succeed in holding companies that now act as arbiters of the public discourse accountable to the public interest."

Wikileaks can feel free to use our startup's services all they want. I'm not releasing server logs or user data without court order.

If the US government starts shutting down tech businesses due to their users political activities, I'm sure that will be better press than I could ever hope to pay for. No senators will want it on their record that they are destroying small businesses to play politics.

Would the US Government shut down Amazon over this? I highly doubt it.

Everyone here realizes that businesses exist to make profits. That isn't something anyone here is in the dark about - our point is more that with all channels that enable free speech going through SOME business intermediary (in this case Amazon), there are few places left to actually exercise that right when everyone just falls back on the catch-all excuse of profits or appeasing investors.

Also, you are making quite the assumption when you say "...in a country that isn't negatively impacted by the leaks."

Yea ok, it's your company, you decide. (But don't give me the 'would have been shut down', I really doubt Lieberman would have shut down Amazon).

But then we, as consumers, shall decide not to do more business with your company.

Quite timely this happening now -- I would have bought a lot of Christmas presents on Amazon. Now I'll be taking my business elsewhere.

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