Comment by rbarooah | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rbarooah | Hacker News Reader

Whilst I agree with the point they are trying to make, they article is argued in a fallacious way that made me feel uncomfortable - they start off by acknowledging that there is no way to know whether Amazon really caved because of the call from Lieberman:

'While it's impossible to know whether or not Amazon's decision was directly caused by the call from the senator's office, we do know that Lieberman has proposed "anti-WikiLeaks legislation" and that he has a history of pushing for online censorship in the name of "security."'

But then for the rest of the piece they make strong statements assuming that it is true:

"That makes it all the more unfortunate that Amazon caved to unofficial government pressure to squelch core political speech. Amazon had an opportunity to stand up for its customer's right to free expression. Instead, Amazon ran away with its tail between its legs."

I wish they'd found a more honest way to make their point than innuendo. They could have at least kept it as a question for the reader to answer in their own mind.

It doesn't matter whether the pressure is explicit or not. If there appears to be pressure, and the company appears to act in response, it sets a precedent and acts as social proof for future actions. It becomes easier for the next company to do what appears to be "expected of them" when the government has qualms about the business they're doing, not even if they expect reprisals, but simply because that's what others do.

It is the perception of it being true that is truly damaging, regardless of the facts. As the article mentions at the end, it "Other Internet intermediaries should now expect to receive a phone call when some other member of Congress is unhappy with speech they are hosting. After all, it worked on Amazon."

If Amazon had just kept the site up, OR if there was no call to their offices about it, and they removed WikiLeaks on their own, the perception would be different. A more independent Amazon and a world where US companies can make their own legal decisions about content without Gov't interference or coercion.

Now the perception is someone as big as Amazon can get scared by a phone call, and no place is safe to put a site that might tick off a gov't official, and they get ticked off at a LOT of stuff.

I have no doubt that political (and popular?) pressure played a role in Amazon's decision. From a business standpoint it seems like a solid decision. Hosting wikileaks gains little and could be quite costly in lawsuits, ddos, loss of political standing and bad press.

Regardless this is a clear message that if you are going to publish something controversial online, Amazon (and likely similar providers) are not the place to do it.

Unfortunately the scope of what is controversial is quickly expanding and already encompasses what some would consider speech vital to maintaining the rights and freedoms granted to citizens of the US.

“Hosting wikileaks gains little and could be quite costly in lawsuits, ddos, loss of political standing and bad press”

The whole point of singling out Amazon as a coward is to rebalance the cost and gain. Some people are expecting business to have morales too (well yes some don't and the topic is quite debatable).

Otherwise it will gradually end up with situations in some country (should be obvious I assume) where any government official with sufficient power can make a phone call to an Internet company to delete unwanted content, and the guy receiving the call would be beaten to death if he dares to say no.

I think it misses the main point as well. Large hosting companies are getting more wary of hosting controversial content of any kind. I don't think Rackspace killed the Quran-burning site because of government pressure, for example; and that situation seems fairly similar to this one. It might be that in this case the reason it was "controversial content" was pressure from the government, but it's not clear to me that Amazon wouldn't have done the same thing for different kinds of controversial content where the pressure came from, say, Oprah, rather than the government.

What if anything to do about that situation is trickier, which I guess is one reason for the EFF to frame it the other way. If indeed it was explicitly government pressure behind the scenes that caused Amazon's decision, then the analysis isn't nearly as tricky, because it's just government censorship, so what the EFF should do about it is obvious (oppose censorship, like they always do).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com