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Comment by potatolicious | Hacker News Reader

I have a hard time linking "getting out of the crossfire" with "unethical". Spineless? Perhaps. Failing to stand up for some principle? Probably.

But unethical?

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The government shouldn't interfere with private transactions without proper cause and due process. When a big business complies with a "polite request" from the government, and that request is the sort that would be illegal and justification for armed rebellion if it were phrased as an order, that business is unethical and colluding with corrupt government.

Failing to stand up for some principle? Probably.

But unethical?

Do you doublethink so?

This is the internal inconsistency that troubles me about this whole WikiLeaks thing. We've railed on companies constantly in the past for being political, and now we're railing on them for not being sufficiently political in our favor.

So which will it be?

This is Amazon, PayPal, VISA, MC, etc, saying "woah hey a dangerously hot potato, not touching that", which strikes me as a more or less neutral stance.

To expect more than that would be expecting a company to make a political stand on one side or another - something we've consistently fought against in the past.

So which is it? Do we want companies to remain politically neutral and leave the democratic process up to real people (as opposed to corporate persons)?

Or do we want them to fight for our cause, and make open political stands? If so, we also have to accept that often they will not be fighting on our side, and each punch they throw will be worth a lot of real people's punches.

When confronted with the situation, neutrality isn't possible: you either stand up for your users or you help the Government to censor.

There's only so much you can avoid taking sides on.

Not all users are created equal. We know this, just as we know that the customer is not always right. None of this is black and white, there is gray across the board.

These are complex decisions being made by complex businesses...why does no single company deserve the benefit of the doubt?

They all do. Everyone deserves it, and it has been given many times. But many companies have broken that trust, repeatedly and gotten away with murder.

I don't think its about the benefit of doubt anymore. I think we have to recognize that the groups on the other side of the power equation are implacable and do not have constraints stopping them from harming you. They have the power to take over your life and do not have any oversight.

Heck I would say that they have evolved to game the system and learnt how to be the best at it.

The original system was not about "the constitution" or freedom, liberty, fraternity or whatever ideal we can point to. It was about distributing power evenly and having checks and balances in the most enlightened way possible.

That power equation IS out of whack, and it needs to be brought back into balance.

At what point do you stop staring at the minute details and say - Crap things are messed up.

When was the last time you heard a company take the long view about society? If corporations don't care because they have a need to make money, if the rule makers have been corrupted and the average user is irrelevant, if the impartiality of the referees/judges is being removed, then who is there to ensure the system works?

As someone pointed out - "I mean, do we have to wait until they grope us at checkpoints? Checked. Until they take websites down without trial? Checked. Until they start accusing journalist of espionage? Checked. Until they illegally tape the Internet? Checked."

Heck you have to get pissed off at some point before you do something about it. Its likely that the point has been passed.

"We've railed on companies constantly in the past for being political"

I have no problem with companies being political, my only problem is when they use their disproportionate power to rewrite the laws in a way that screws all other stakeholders. Would Amazon hosting WikiLeaks be a case of a big company using their political influence to rewrite the laws to favor themselves while screwing everyone else? I don't think so, and I don't see any inconsistency.

IMHO, "not touching that" is not being neutral - is taking a position against WikiLeaks.

Being neutral would be more like "I'll let they keep doing their thing, like any other business."

It's a lot easier to classify what wikileaks does as "exercising first amendment rights" than to classify campaign donations as free speech.

"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

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