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Amazon denies government leant on it

by on03 December 2010


We would have booted Wikileaks anyway
Online retailer Amazon denied that the US government was involved in its decision to stop hosting WikiLeaks' content.

The outfit said that it terminated its hosting relationship with the controversial site because it became clear that WikiLeaks was violating Amazon's terms of service. The basis of that breach was because WikiLeaks did not control all of the rights related to the classified government cables it posted this week. In short, it was saying it was a pirate site.

Amazon doubted the documents had been carefully redacted as promised and innocent lives could be put at risk as a result. The site said that “Amazon Web Services (AWS) rents computer infrastructure on a self-service basis. AWS does not pre-screen its customers, but it does have terms of service that must be followed."

WikiLeaks was not following them. There were several parts they were violating. For example, our terms of service state that "you represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the content...that use of the content you supply does not violate this policy and will not cause injury to any person or entity."

It said that Amazon had been running AWS for over four years and have hundreds of thousands of customers storing all kinds of data on AWS. “Some of this data is controversial, and that's perfectly fine. But, when companies or people go about securing and storing large quantities of data that isn't rightfully theirs, and publishing this data without ensuring it won't injure others, it's a violation of our terms of service, and folks need to go operate elsewhere,” Amazon said.

Last modified on 03 December 2010
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