1 Anyone surprised? Really?

2 Cancelling my Prime membership.

3

How can Amazon have an "information must be Free" ethic?

I want Amazon hacked and every single one of thier ebooks be put online for free download.

 

I paid for my Kindle, but the books should be free. 

Ya know, because information should be free.

 

Oh does Amazon not consider a book "information"?

Too bad.

 

4 This isn't just Amazon AWS?

For those who don't know, Amazon rents server space and virtual computing to hundreds of businesses and organizations. It's actually been part of Amazon since 2006.

Rather than assume that Amazon is going out of its way to help out WikiLeaks, it's more likely that Amazon (in an institutional sense) didn't even know who it was renting servers to. Just another customer.

5 Information does not want to be free.

6  Details on Amazon AWS are here and here.

7 it's more likely that Amazon (in an institutional sense) didn't even know who it was renting servers to. Just another customer. Exactly. Someone bought cloud space from Amazon in order to ramp up bandwidth for the expected demand. Amazon probably doesn't even know they're part of this.

8 Are we sure that Amazon, the company, isn't a victim here? WikiLeaks has a pirate mentality, perhaps they're stealing server space with the help of someone inside the company, but aren't in support of it as a company policy.

9 I want free lesbian pron now, dammit!

10 No statement yet from Amazon, at least that I can find.

Do they let the public blog or store content (other than lists and reviews of products) normally?

11 They're open?  Shit anyone ever try to call Amazon?  Try to find a number for them?  Ever talk to a person at Amazon?

I tried to do business with them for six months and NEVER got a reply from them.

Having said that, my Amazon stock has DOUBLE in less than a year!

12 Ditto what Gabe said. I'm sure they switched to Amazon's cloud because it allows them to scale their capacity to millions of visits almost instantly. Amazon's infrastructure is also much better at handling denial of service attacks.

13 ". . . Amazon still has that kind of libertarian information-must-be-free ethic"

The US nuclear launch codes should be made public because information must be free, man!!

14 Do they let the public blog or store content (other than lists and reviews of products) normally? They do. They are actually one of the world's biggest web hosts. See: http://aws.amazon.com/

15

4This isn't just Amazon AWS?

Could be. There aren't a whole lotta' details on the technical issues. But as often is the case, perception is reality and Amazon has a public relations problem on its hands whether it wants it or not.

Plus it just highlights yet another instance of lack of any kind of institutional controls there. Remember the firestorm a couple of weeks ago about them listing the book on how to be a pedophile?

16 John Bolton denies belief that it was a s state v. intelligence document ordering diplomats to spy, and miraculously covers Hillary's ass. Hm.

If Wikileaks fudged the information, does that provide more grounds for its prosecution?

17 From the AWS Terms of Service:

"11.2. Applications and Content. You represent and warrant: (i) that you are solely responsible for the development, operation, and maintenance of Your Content, including without limitation, the accuracy, security, appropriateness and completeness of Your Content and all product-related materials and descriptions; (ii) that you have the necessary rights and licenses, consents, permissions, waivers and releases to use and display Your Content; (iii) that Your Content (a) does not violate, misappropriates or infringes any rights of us or any third party, (b) does not constitutes defamation, invasion of privacy or publicity, or otherwise violates any rights of any third party, or (c) is not designed for use in any illegal activity or to promote illegal activities."

All ignored.

Complicit much?

18

More wikileaks fallout?  Video of Obama and Netanyahu discussion of settlements in Israel?

 

via The Muqata

19

Just in time for the holiday shopping season! Secret diplomatic cables for your Kindle are now half-price! Free shipping! We'll even toss in an Interpol arrest notice if you order by 12-3-10!

Did we mention free shipping?

20

Glenn Reynolds and Charles Johnson hardest hit.

 

(I don't mean to lump the two together as I like Reynolds, but they both hock Amazon like crazy)

21 Amazon.com must be staffed by some clueless SOBs.  First the pederasty how-to guide, now this.

I asked for an e-book reader for Christmas, but specifically specified not the Kindle because of this crap.  I will not be pleased if that stipulation is disregarded, on account of refusing to do business with this scum.

22 Wow. I'm definitely through with Amazon then. Plus, that he could "move" his files to Amazon so quickly makes me think there must be some prior relationship there.

23 Amazon probably doesn't even know they're part of this.

Posted by: Caiwyn at December 01, 2010 09:01 AM (pjDQX)

The story was posted to the web about 6pm last night, they know.

24 posted this at the end of the last thread does anyone want to see the bank leaks?

25

The US nuclear launch codes should be made public because information must be free, man!!

Reminder:  Joe Biden is a heartbeat away from the football.  Thank God we dodged that snowbilly bullet.

26 if the bank leaks had come first who would be hailing assange as a hero?...until he leaked the military secrets of course.....

27 Meh, my money would have been on a move to Google servers.

28 >>> (I don't mean to lump the two together as I like Reynolds, but they both hock Amazon like crazy)

Great Black Friday savings on Olympus mega-pixel cameras.

29

All this from the very same government that guarantees that your medical records will be secure.

30 I'm gonna need a ruling on this....I have 3 things in my Amazon cart right now.  Checkout or delete them?

31

This really blows. I've used amazon for flippin' years. But cruising the brick-and-mortars will be good for my heart.

mac :]

32

I'm gonna need a ruling on this....I have 3 things in my Amazon cart right now.  Checkout or delete them?

Never attribute to malice what can be accomplished through incompetence.  I have serious doubts that Amazon even knows who they host.

33

Checkout or delete them?

That depends. Do the product descriptions have the words "secret" or "noforn" in them?

34 I'm all for a scorched earth policy towards anyone who aids this vile toad.

35 Yeah - I'd wait for amazon to respond at least - I'm pretty sure someone just showed up with a credit card and said "I'd like some server space" not "I'm trying to get people killed, can I please have a server?"

36   This isn't just Amazon AWS?

For those who don't know, Amazon rents server space and virtual computing to hundreds of businesses and organizations. It's actually been part of Amazon since 2006.

Rather than assume that Amazon is going out of its way to help out WikiLeaks, it's more likely that Amazon (in an institutional sense) didn't even know who it was renting servers to. Just another customer.

This.

37 I'm sure Amazon didn't know WikiLeaks was using their servers...it's not possible for them to read all the content that customers post on them.  The question is now that they're aware of it, what are they going to do about it?

38

posted this at the end of the last thread

does anyone want to see the bank leaks?

I do. Here's the thing. I don't have a problem with wikileaks in that I don't mind information getting out there. However, there does seem to me to be a self imposed limit. I would think military secrets would fall under that.

I think the more information people have the better. If wikileaks was leaking bank documents or things of that nature then i am fine with it. I'm still not sure where I stand on the diplomatic cables. Let's be honest, of everything realeased so far, have you read anything you really didn't know? Sure, now its proven, but we all kinda surmised all thet things that were to be confirmed by the leak right?

I would much prefer if wikileaks would start to leak information from repressive nations like China or Russia, that would be interesting. As Ace pointed out yesterday, after reading these cables or most of them, you get the idea that America is a very well behaved country. There were no Nixon like bombshells. It is the sneaky and underhanded moves by countries like China and Russia that would be truly interesting to get a look at.

That said, i still think Assange should be dealt with for releasing the military information a while back.

39 36: 'They didn't know' is, to my mind, probably even more damning.  It implies they don't understand what public perception can do to their brand.  And like I say, I strongly believe in 'too stupid to live'...

40

Maybe Amazon didn't know their service was being used by Wikileaks to damage US national security and diplomatic relations.  But now they do.

So they better pull the plug on Wikileaks faster than they did that how-to book on child sexual molestation.

There's a price to be paid for a "take all comers" policy on customers Amazon will do business with.  That price is lost business from customers that won't patronize businesses that deal with smut or treasonous security leaks.

41

Never attribute to malice what can be accomplished through incompetence.  I have serious doubts that Amazon even knows who they host.

Posted by: Circa (Insert Year Here) at December 01, 2010 09:24 AM (B+qrE)

I'm going with this.  (Besides two of the items are each $10 bucks cheaper at Amazon than a wholesale club I checked.)

But....I'll let the cart sit until I see what Amazon is going to do about it now that they know.

42 I emailed Amazon's customer service and told them I was not happy with the WikiLeaks link.

43 AoSHQ's DarkLord - Complaining that Amazon doesn't know all of its customers at this point is like complaining that McDonalds servers food to rapists. They're too big to 'vet' their customers before they start providing services. That said, once management get a whiff of this I really hope they pull the plug.

44 39 36: 'They didn't know' is, to my mind, probably even more damning.  It implies they don't understand what public perception can do to their brand.  And like I say, I strongly believe in 'too stupid to live'...

Posted by: AoSHQ's DarkLord© at December 01, 2010 09:30 AM (GBXon)

That makes no sense.  You're thinking of them like they're a newspaper and Wikileaks bought space on the front page...it's not like that at all.  It's more like thousands of computers with millions of files which even with organizations like Google dedicating billions of dollars to be able to find the needle in the haystack you're looking for, it's still difficult.

45 I sent them an email from my Amazon account, explaining that due to their support of the scum-bags at WikiLeaks, I would buy from any other online retailer BEFORE I would even consider buying it from Amazon, even if it cost me more $. This was 24 hours ago. They say on their site that they will respond generally within 12 hours. I think we are witnessing an "Oh Shit..." moment at Amazon.....

46 If you do a search for 'Wikileaks' at Amazon, you get a lot of books

47

phoenixgirl, no I don't want to see the bank leaks, nor did I want to see the military or diplomatic leaks. If an insider of any of those organizations sees something he suspects of being illegal there are channels to go through and laws to protect whistleblowers. I guess if there was a situation like the climategate stuff where the organization had a history of hiding stuff from lawful freedom-of-information requests that might change my mind.

Plus there's already enough out there in the public record on the banks to have all the major banks shut down and many senior officers convicted. There's just no will to do anything about it for fear of the consequences.

 

48 Evidence from the Wikipedia Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud article that no one's minding the store:

In early July 2008 Outblaze and Spamhaus.org started to block Amazon's EC2 address-pool due to problems with the distribution of spam and malware.

49

If Amazon shuts it down and declares this a violation of their terms of service then I really don't have a problem with this.  Customers who sign up for the service are the ones obliged to assert and warrant their rights to the content.

 

I'm willing to wait and see.

50

does anyone want to see the bank leaks?

No, because that's illegal, too.  Laws matter, folks.

51 Sock off.

52 They're too big to 'vet' their customers before they start providing services.

Bullshit.  When a customer requests the kind of bandwidth Asange would have to, Amazon is going to look a LOT closer up front.  This isn't quite like some local carpet cleaning service looking to establish a web presence.

53 52 They're too big to 'vet' their customers before they start providing services.

Bullshit.  When a customer requests the kind of bandwidth Asange would have to, Amazon is going to look a LOT closer up front.  This isn't quite like some local carpet cleaning service looking to establish a web presence.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at December 01, 2010 09:50 AM (Vk5gR)

I don't think so...there'll be a selection of 'plans'...you choose your 'plan', pay for it and if your credit card clears on the web page, then away you go.

54 Okay, people, there are something like 15 million books on Amazon, and they allow booksellers (meaning, anyone who signs up for a business account) to upload book titles. Do you really think that Amazon is able to review 100% of all titles in the .5 seconds between when someone uploads a title and when it is listed?

As for the cloud service -- it's been around for almost 5 years and has hundreds of thousands of businesses and individuals using it. Even big businesses use it. Again, if Joe Smith signs up for an account do they go "OMZG!!!! Check the copyright on every word or we'll be COMPLICIT MUCH!!!" Dude. Haven't you ever heard of YouTube? Or Blogspot or Typepad? They all have similar terms of use, and they don't review content BEFOREHAND to make sure it complies. It would be impossible.

Geez. Deep breath, people.

55 In related news, the CIA, State Dep't and Pentagon are now considering moving all of their high sensistivity materials to Amazon, for security reasons.

56 I pulled my ads from Amazon yesterday and sent an email to the customer support email address for ads and explained why. No response yet.

57 A business who has already been stung once with a high profile 'you're working with what?!?' and then stumbles into a second, even larger scale one, does not inspire confidence in investors.

Should they know all their customers?  On that scale, I agree, unlikely.  But they should be on the lookout for potential problems, and unless WikiLeaks hid who they were, the potential for serious trouble should have been glaringly obvious--it's not like this blew up out of nowhere, after all.

But agreed, it's what they do from here that will be the stronger tell.

58 @52, that's bullsh!t. Do you know how many large companies host download servers at Amazon because it's cheaper than running their own? My own Fortune 500 software company does for SOFTWARE DOWNLOADS, and the bandwidth is significantly larger than Wikileaks's.

59 And, by and larger, information should be free, especially if it relates to government or elite corruption. ClimateGate springs to mind.

60 So, I'm with phoenixgirl. Pass me the bank leaks.

61 Do you know how many large companies host download servers at Amazon because it's cheaper than running their own?

Yea, and one of your mailroom clerks just set it up with a credit card on their lunch hour.  Right.

62 27 Meh, my money would have been on a move to Google servers.

Yes, yes, Google good!

63 assange needs to be dealt with and i'm glad the manning pussy is locked up for what i hope a very long life...laws do matter and not to equate military secrets with corporate, industrial or political secrets..but espionage is espionage as for amazon.....f'em

64 Information wants to be free!

Bullshit!

Fuck information and its ill-formed desires!

My dawg always thought she wanted to be free (kept replaying Freddy Mercury trax) until, one day, I just let her out and told her to go fuck herself.

(Admittedly, not my best moment as a puppeh owner.)

20 min. later...

Got her ass kicked by a neighborhood cat, with significant damage done to one of her corneas.

Yech!

If I had known how gross looking the whole healing process was going to be, I'd never have let her back in!

I lie.  The whole point of having doors is so doggehs can go in and out of them!  I know that.  Just try not to be a dick and protect your baby from vicious cats!

In hundreds of hours of walking her, I never met a cat that wouldn't pack up and go, once I gave them the stink-eye!

65 Bullshit. When a customer requests the kind of bandwidth Asange would have to, Amazon is going to look a LOT closer up front. This isn't quite like some local carpet cleaning service looking to establish a web presence.

You clearly don't know how Amazon's hosting works. Bandwidth, as well as server resources, are assigned on the fly as needed. You only get charged for what you use, there is no predetermined request for bandwidth. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of websites using Amazon's service this way.  That's probably the entire reason Wikileaks switched to it in the first place.

Of course, their distribution of stolen material ought to be against Amazon's terms of service... I suspect you'll see Amazon pull the plug shortly.  I'll be surprised if they don't.

66 Okay, you guys are sooooooo right. PA, I mean, some guy buying a POSTED PUBLIC SERVICE, is obviously a suspicious act, right? I mean, the kind that demands that Amazon run a full background check and then review all information before allowing the site to go up.

You know what else? I bet Assange uses an iPhone. Let's find out. If he uses an iPhone, let's boycott Apple FOREVER. For the complicity. And he obviously has an ISP. BOYCOTT! And he is wearing clothes, so, like, LL Bean should be boycotted. For not knowing who is wearing their clothes. And he is probably going to use an airplane at some point. And we should find out what type of computer he uses and then boycott Windows or double-boycott Mac because they didn't try to cut off his access to treason. Complicity!

The story broke at 6pm yesterday? God, let's give Amazon until frickin' lunch today to do something.

67 Meh.

Henry Ford is Deety.

Stupid smelly sock!

68 If that were true then Amazon would have cut WikiSpy off the minute they found out they were hosting it ... but they didn't. They haven't even been able to say anything about it. Amazon is guilty as sin. Posted by: iknowtheleft®© at December 01, 2010 10:10 AM (G/MYk)

It's been less than twenty-four hours that the news even broke. You want them to cut off paying customers and break existing contracts without building a case first? You must have supported Obama breaking contracts with GM and Chrysler shareholders in the auto bailouts, too.

69 Was considering using Amazon to get $10 off Starcraft 2.  Now I'm not so sure. . . .

70

>> What reason can you think of for Amazon not having pulled WikiSpy, yet, and not having offered any explanation for their treason?

Caiwyn mentions the most important 2 reasons, the notification timeframe and making certain you are legally correct before you break a contract.

Also that's a good explanation of how cloud services/bandwidth is actually sold.

 

71

I canceled my Amazon.com account when the whole pedophile book thing came out for the Kindle.

I've never had such a visceral and strong reaction to ANYTHING as I did for that.

They can give this wikileaks guy hosting four times for all I care.

72 Of course, their distribution of stolen material ought to be against Amazon's terms of service... I suspect you'll see Amazon pull the plug shortly.  I'll be surprised if they don't.

Posted by: Caiwyn at December 01, 2010 10:30 AM (ttktr)

--I hope there's a press release to this very soon.

73

Just remember: this is the same Amazon that deleted 1984 from people's Kindles a while back.

Just saying...

74 Assuming Amazon's offices are in the Eastern time zone, they have been open for two and one half hours. In corporate time, that's long enough for a phone call to kick things off, and a couple of quick meetings by different groups of people (lawyers, accountants, IT guys).

Next, a meeting of bigger fish, followed by a presentation at the executive level. I doubt that will happen until after lunch. By the end of the day, though, wikileaks should be off AmazonAWS's servers. If not, then I expect lots of people will be cancelling their accounts, and this will become a classic business school case study.

75

Is it possible that Amazon knew nothing about what was going on the rental service space? Absolutely.

Once Amazon did find out about it did they pull the content? No.

It's simple, once Amazon knew, they should have pulled or blocked the files. They didn't and still haven't as of today.

Actions have consequences, I will not buy anything again from Amazon. Screw them.

76 It says "Leaks"

77 If not, then I expect lots of people will be cancelling their accounts, and this will become a classic business school case study.

Posted by: Josef K. at December 01, 2010 10:43 AM (7+pP9)

Yes, please fuck up Amazon!

78 It's simple, once Amazon knew, they should have pulled or blocked the files. They didn't and still haven't as of today.

Do we know that they haven't done this for sure?

79 Assuming Amazon's offices are in the Eastern time zone, they have been open for two and one half hours.

They're in Seattle, so Pacific time.

And I agree with Gabe - it's dead easy to setup an AWS/EC2 account and throw whatever you want on there (including spam/malware).  Amazon probably didn't know what was happening until it became A Thing.

80 This is another problem caused by Bush that President Obama mus fix! I am tired of finding out more and more problems caused by Bush that our new President has to fix. He is working hard to help us out of this mess. We all should be thankful he is on the job and working on the problems ......

81 I for one am appalled that Amazon would even offer such a service without a thorough background check.  If you ask me, the government should just shut them down.

82 Even giving them that, it became A Thing late yesterday afternoon.  In internet terms, that's 25 years ago.

You've clearly never worked for a large publicly-traded corporation with a legal department.  I expect meetings about this could run all day.

83 Even giving them that, it became A Thing late yesterday afternoon. In internet terms, that's 25 years ago.

Posted by: iknowtheleft®© at December 01, 2010 10:55 AM (G/MYk)

And in legal terms, that's less than 24 hours. You want people to jump to conclusions without getting the facts straight and an argument fomulated.

84 85 Assuming Amazon's offices are in the Eastern time zone, they have been open for two and one half hours.

They're in Seattle, so Pacific time.

[...]

Posted by: Ian S. at December 01, 2010 10:54 AM (p05LM)

So it is 7:55 AM there. We need to while away a few hours watching a good movie  busty lesbian porn and then revisit this. One note: if this hit the intarwebs at 6PM eastern time, then Amazon has known about it overnight (6PM eastern = 3PM pacific), and once they open "officially" we should see some fast action. Or not, depending how tone deaf or mentally deficient they are.

85 I'm not sure what more basis for concluding that the leaks are "illegal" or at least a violation of the TOS than the Secretary of State of the U.S. saying so in a nationally broadcast press conference.
Do they usually wait for more than that?

86 One note: if this hit the intarwebs at 6PM eastern time, then Amazon has known about it overnight (6PM eastern = 3PM pacific), and once they open "officially" we should see some fast action. Or not, depending how tone deaf or mentally deficient they are.

Posted by: Josef K. at December 01, 2010 11:00 AM (7+pP9)

Well, no, because the story was reported at 6:14pm Pacific time, which is well after the close of the business day, and by my watch it's barely 8:00 over there right now.

So what some people apparently want is for Amazon to have released a statement and pulled the plug on a customer before anyone has even gotten to work. Jesus, could you guys keep from getting your panties in a wad for at least a day? Give them a chance to respond for once. If they say they're ignoring their TOS in order to allow WikiLeaks to operate, then you can collect your scalp.

87 Posted by: Caiwyn at December 01, 2010 11:09 AM (ttktr)

Really, you are urging restraint in this case, even though they never showed such restraint elsewhere? Strange.

88

90 And in legal terms, that's less than 24 hours. You want people to jump to conclusions without getting the facts straight and an argument fomulated.

They haven't even commented on it. Not even the standard "We're looking into it" blah blah blah statement.

If it violated their terms or Amazon decided the content was not appropriate, which I don't consider leaked classified documents to be, they SHOULD pull it out of a sense of patriotism if nothing else. We're fighting 2 wars, these documents will further endanger our troops and allies working with us. This is a U.S. based company. They could pull it if they wanted to right now. As of this post they still haven't, or I haven't seen any stories yet claiming they did. Go read the WSJ story posted over at Hot Air. I am basing my opinion on what I know right now, if it turns out Amazon is doing the right thing then I will continue to use them. If not they are done in my book.

89 @93, no, they didn't edit the text of 1984. They claimed that the person selling the Kindle edition of 1984 didn't have the proper copyright and blocked access to that content.

Sound like a familiar argument?

And whoever was dissing the idea of a contract being a "monumental" thing -- yeah, actually, it is a monumental thing for a major corporation that is competing for B2B IT services. They don't want to give the impression of yanking legitimately purchased cloud space and taking entire businesses offline because of public perception and possibly erroneous information.

And considering that NONE OF THIS INFORMATION IS DANGEROUS (unlike his previous military leaks), I'm having a hard time getting it up for this drama. I don't care about embarrassing politicians.

90 LOL. Amazon is closed. No one's in the office. They don't ever surf the internet, or anything. Amazon people don't know about all that new-fangled stuff. They'll pull the site after the someone physically checks his "in" memos. Posted by: iknowtheleft®© at December 01, 2010 11:15 AM (G/MYk)

Right, because everybody knows that the legal department of every major corporation works 24/7 and doesn't even sleep, right? LOL. God, you really are an idiot. It hurts my brain just trying to think down to your level.

91 And, yeah, I said "erroneous." Whoever gave Assange the info committed a serious felony. There's no evidence Assange has done anything illegal here.

92 Well, no, because the story was reported at 6:14pm Pacific time, which is well after the close of the business day

My mistake. Still, the quickness with which they address this case will be watched by a lot of people, both morons and non-morons. Senior management and executive-level people must have learned about this last night, so it isn't like they are going to walk into their offices and get hit with a bombshell.

My question is, why isn't Fox covering this?

93 Right or wrong this is a PR nightmare for Amazon.  They don't need this after the do-it-yourself pedophile book uproar.

94 Ugg boots, anyone?

They make 'em for guys now too!

95 One would think having the incoming Chairman of the House Homeland Security committee calling for the designation of your client as a Terrorist Organization would get the management out of bed at night, maybe a telecon or two. I'm certain that the load and the DoS attacks could cause "serious technical issues" while your bosses and lawyers "wrapped their arms around it".

96 42 I emailed Amazon's customer service and told them I was not happy with the WikiLeaks link.

Posted by: Jewels at December 01, 2010 09:32 AM (WDFrJ)

I did the same.  The DOJ should put Amazon executives in jail for receiving stolen property and treason.

97 Certain segments of the Amazon workforce certainly take off at closing time, but a business like Amazon doesn't *really* close, someone is watching things at all times there. And the bosses can always be called at home to deal with things. They can move fast if they want to and apparently, in this case, they don't want to.

The legality of this whole issue is beside the point, as was stated earlier, this is really a PR issue for them.

98 My question is, why isn't Fox covering this?
Posted by: Josef K. at December 01, 2010 11:17 AM (7+pP9)

Same reason. It's been less than 24 hours since the story was broken by a local news station in Seattle, and Amazon's execs and lawyers probably aren't even available for comment yet. Journalism takes time and effort; Fox has to actually gather information before they can report it.

99 103 Ugg boots, anyone?

They make 'em for guys now too!

Posted by: Tom Brady at December 01, 2010 11:19 AM (BP6Z1)

They look especially good on long-haired fairies like you.

100 Same reason. It's been less than 24 hours since the story was broken by a local news station in Seattle, and Amazon's execs and lawyers probably aren't even available for comment yet. Journalism takes time and effort; Fox has to actually gather information before they can report it.

Posted by: Caiwyn at December 01, 2010 11:23 AM (ttktr)

I call bullshit, that hasn't ever stopped news orgs from posting news items, why the restraint her?

101 10,000+ employees, a business that runs 24 hours a day all over the globe and the prevailing rationale for their inaction is that :they "haven't gotten to it" yet? This isn't a pirated Britney Spears CD, it's classified wartime intelligence, and everyone from the Sec. of State to Interpol is looking for the guy whose credit card they keep swiping.

102 Right or wrong this is a PR nightmare for Amazon. They don't need this after the do-it-yourself pedophile book uproar.
Posted by: mpfs at December 01, 2010 11:19 AM (iYbLN)

Meh, they could turn this around easily by pulling the plug. The real question is, will pulling the plug on WikiLeaks hurt their PR more on a global level?

103

They look especially good on long-haired fairies like you.

Posted by: Randy Moss at December 01, 2010 11:24 AM (7+pP9)

Fuck off, or I'll make an annoying rap about you too!

104 Now it all makes sense.  Julian Assange's mother runs a puppet theater in Australia.

How can anyone be normal around that?

105 10,000+ employees, a business that runs 24 hours a day all over the globe and the prevailing rationale for their inaction is that :they "haven't gotten to it" yet? This isn't a pirated Britney Spears CD, it's classified wartime intelligence, and everyone from the Sec. of State to Interpol is looking for the guy whose credit card they keep swiping.
Posted by: Lincolntf at December 01, 2010 11:26 AM (Z6Mgb)

Which is exactly why it has to be handled by the top people in the company. And that's assuming they even know about it yet: we're talking about a story that has been reported by a local news station and hasn't even hit the big national news wires yet. There is every possibility that the legal team and the executives of Amazon still don't know about this. You think they read all the same blogs that you do?

106 Posted by: Caiwyn

I assume they have Blackberries and people who keep track of bad press 24/7. I do not buy that the executives are unaware of the situation to the extent that they can't slap a "TOS" violation on them.

107

a. it was brought to our attention

b. we investigated the facts, and deemed them credible

c. we acted and severed our agreement

That's the responsible thing to do, it will mitigate the PR risks.

Honestly it amazes me this presumption that a company who is interested in its profitability and image would knee-jerk something this volatile, OR worse, leave it up just to make some political "statement".

Rather than check it out, and respond in a business day, shut it off, and issue a statement that follows my outline.

 

108 "Which is exactly why it has to be handled by the top people in the company. And that's assuming they even know about it yet: we're talking about a story that has been reported by a local news station and hasn't even hit the big national news wires yet. There is every possibility that the legal team and the executives of Amazon still don't know about this. You think they read all the same blogs that you do?"

Posted by: Caiwyn at December 01, 2010 11:29 AM

Well there's a story in this little thing called the Wall Street Journal that has a story on it. It was reported yesterday by a local news station. Your assumption that they don't know about it yet is ridiculous, or perhaps you're correct and everyone at Amazon doesn't watch the local news or read the WSJ. Do you think the reporters didn't ask Amazon for comment?

I am perfectly willing to be wrong on this. I hope I am, I've purchased things from them as recently as last week. I think they ought to be more worried about the P.R. damage than a lawsuit from Assranger and Wiki.

109 "Yea, and one of your mailroom clerks just set it up with a credit card on their lunch hour. Right." Actually, yes. Its that simple. Check out AWS cloud yourself and see how easy it is. The problem isn't that they are on Amazon, they really don't vet upfront, the problem now is to see how Amazon responds to this.

110 Not bizarre.  There was this self-published book about how to seduce children that everyone got up in arms about, and Amazon defended listing it until the very last minute, when it became clear that a lot of people were going to boycott Amazon right before Christmas.

111 The story broke at 6pm yesterday? God, let's give Amazon until frickin' lunch today to do something.

Posted by: Ella at December 01, 2010 10:31 AM (DmnMk)

I posted a link to the WSJ story yesterday morning- the WA TV station was a little behind in their reporting, or mabe saved it for the evening news. I agree with the others here that there has been plenty of time for Amazon to make some kind of statement. In this type of situation, the execs can gets their butts out of bed to deal with a problem.

112

If only the Iranians had put all of their centrifuge software behind teh Amazon firewall....

Amazon Stux! 

113 will all you morons shut the hell up. AWS is a completely automated service and all you need to sign up is a credit card, the entire process does not involve a single human at amazon. now stfu and give amazon time to respond. if they are hosted on aws, and amazon does not do anything about it by tomorrow, then let the freak outs begin. until then, you are making yourselves look like idiots yammering about something you do not understand.

114 Fuck Jeff Bezos. Maybe Bezos and Assange can trade-off getting ass-raped in prison.

115 Hey Dave M @ #125.    F**k you and the high horse you rode in on. We are entitled to our opinions about the lack of response from Amazon to the disgusting role they are playing in the theft of data from our government, and the subsequent spraying of it across the internet. You may also kiss my a** you sanctimonious twit.

116 Oh, and Dave M. By the way, are you really expecting us to believe that Amazon set up web-hosting services, with no thought given to this or another similar scenario occurring, and making contingency plans to handle it? Now then, who is the moron here, hmmm? Would you like to borrow a mirror...?

117 zipity, you'd do well to take David M's advice. Besides, do you really, really want Amazon or other bandwidth providers to watch everything you do and immediately suspend your service if they don't like what they see? Should AT&T monitor your phone conversations, too?

118 Amazon Web Services has thousands of customers. Any other hosting provider would have the same issues. I detest Wikileaks, but would rather not have Obama & Co. deciding what content a hosting provider can support.

119 What I really want is if an egregious incident involving illegal espionage against America would occur again, that any reputable American company would not be a part of the process used to disseminate illegally obtained, top-secret information that can damage American and the other countries mentioned. I'm not advocating general governmental internet censorship, and I believe you are being incredibly disingenuous at best, or transparently stupid at worst to imply that is my point....

120 "I detest Wikileaks, but would rather not have Obama & Co. deciding what content a hosting provider can support."

Can we all agree that stolen top-secret government documents, the dissemination of which is a FELONY is a clear line in the sand that cannot be dismissed because a company has "thousands of customers"?  I know thousands of people. If I happen to kill one, do I get a pass because the other thousands are still okay?

121 Amazon took it down, so I guess I can go back to ordering books on my Kindle again.

122 Wall Street Journal and zipity, I don't know what to tell you. If Amazon's "abetting espionage" by having now-public information on their distributed storage network then so are the media outlets who've actually published the information. And, I suppose, so are the drivers of the trucks that delivered the espionage-filled newspapers, the ISPs that allowed their bandwidth to be used for distributing felonious data, etc. And I certainly hope you haven't read any of it.

Don't misunderstand. I think WikiLeaks are a bunch of slimy, self-righteous, and cowardly bastards. But they're not international spymasters, and if they have this data, then it wasn't secured worth a damn in the first place. The people to blame here are the folks in our own military, diplomatic, and security apparatus that made this information so easily accessible, and that prick who actually leaked it. Once it's out, it's out.

123 So....if someone steals $1million dollars...and I happen to "find" $250,000 of it in cash, too bad for the one who had it stolen from them, eh? Good to know GalosGann. Can I have your home address, make/model of your car. Cause you know, they're just out there...

124 Similarly, by GalosGann Logic© Amazon should be free to have child-porn and snuff films available for download, since the stuff is just "out there" and they didn't actually produce it. Again, good to know where you're coming from Galos....

125 zipity, you are an idiot. all of you were acting like morons and you see as soon as amazon realized it was hosted there it was gone. don't you feel stupid.

126 Dave M, you are an idiot. all of you were acting like morons and you see as soon as amazon realized it was in the middle of a shit storm of bad PR, that was going to cost it a bundle, it was gone. don't you feel stupid? I fixed it for you Davey boy.... Care to offer any evidence that if we who opposed this hadn't been extremely vocal in our opposition to it, it wouldn't still be there? Thought so....

127

Puma Ferrari Shoes the boycott, contempt advertising point of view, is affecting the 1.3 billion Chinese consumers and 60 million marketing people.

128 the note, induction, there are public service ads and commercial advertising of the points.