Amazon is not the victim of the state in the Wikileaks affair. They joined in in the assault on Wikileaks and the anti-Wikileakds hysteria by accompanying their cutting off with an anti-Wikileaks propaganda message. They are not a victim, like the other companies that had to disassociate under pressure, but which did not spout BS when they did so.
The reason why Wikileaks and its supports attack Amazon is because Amazon refused to host the Wikileaks site but yet, Amazon still sells a book about Wikileaks and they are profitting from it. So they are being hypocrits..
So, are you arguing that Lieberman’s pressure is totally irrelevant? Would have Amazon ended hosting had Lieberman’s secretaries not made the call? How do you know that that message was not influenced in part by government pressure?
I tackle it from a different angle (well, the topic of whether or not we should boycott Amazon): On Amazon.
Amazon ending the hosting is not the problem. That is their right. And not doing so might land them in trouble.
The issue is Amazon attacking Wikileaks in their press release, which it did not have to do. Did Lieberman demand of them to issue a statment of that sort, or else? Of course not.
They made a voluntary decision to pick a side by slandering Wikileaks in a manner worthy of Bill O’Reilly. They will have to retract their statement or they are, in the eternal struggle between power and freedom, on the other side of the barricades.
And why should I (or anyone else) care about their (or anybody elses) excuses?
Amazon is not the only company to cease doing business with Wikileaks. But they are the only one to accompany their cesation with a hatchet job. They could have stopped the cooperation quietly like the rest, but instead decided to play the moral vertical.
I say ostracize them.
You wouldn’t have links on your site to Sean Hannity’s store would you?
I don’t see the problem with this is if you view this from Amazon.com’s point of view.
Did anyone expect Amazon.com to come out and say, (in Ali G voice) “ya’ll, we iz libertarianz and we maintain dat the gunvernment is not the rightful owner of anythang, thus, it doez not follow dat WikiLeaks is hostin’ data stolen from da gunvernment. Btw, we iz also anti-IP and we maintain dat copying iz not theft”?
That it “attacked” WikiLeaks (it actually tried to cover its tracks by offering its clientele an excuse, probably to avoid loss in sales) doesn’t mean that it was not pressured by Lieberman to close hosting to WikiLeaks. You can boycott it if you’d like, but I don’t think the rationale makes much sense.
What about loss of sales had the company been the target of ostracism by part of politicians, such as Lieberman? I think the “anti-terrorism, America f-yeah” people outnumber the “boycott Amazon” people.
I don’t think we disagree on anything. I was pointing out two excuses it could have given for booting WikiLeaks that would not have offended the boycotters (Justin Raimondo, et al.) It also didn’t have to “attack” WikiLeaks to not be boycotted by the Team America f*** yeah-ers.
I think some people don’t fully think through the implications…
It’s much easier to play the “mythical CEO” on message boards and argue on principal that company X shouldn’t waffle on the issue. Yet, as a businessman, I understand the distancing and certainly wouldn’t want to lose revenue and market share because I have to make a political point. Even if a company like Amazon told the government to shove it and supported Assange, they would pay for it some other way. They would probably be worse off.
Also, why are we singling out Amazon?
There are plenty of companies that have caved into government pressure for one reason or another. The reasons CEO’s don’t speak out is because they don’t want the government making an example out of them.
If anyone out there wanted to protest the government and lose profits as a result, then all the power to you. Unfortunately, it’s not in the interest of the owners, shareholders, or consumers of the company most of the time.
You are talking about something you aren’t informed about. There is not a law on the books to the effect that publishing information stolen from the US government is a crime. Numerous newspapers have published Wikileaks releases and have not been charged. Because it is not against any existing law. In fact most wikileaks first appeared publicly in various newspapers, and only then appeared on the WikiLeaks website. You and Amazon are talking nonsense and conflating stealing and leaking information with publishing it. Stealing and leaking (Ellsberg, Manning) is illegal, publishing it (New York Times, WikiLeaks, The Guardian…) is not.
Congratulations on not reading through the thread at all before replying.
The point is exactly that instead of remaining businessmen, Amazon went out and made a political point of publicly bashing and smearing WikiLeaks, instead of keeping their head down and their mouth shut.
Giiven that we should boycott Amazon, what good alternatives are out there? Especially ones that are reachable in Germany. I’m looking at prices, variety of products, shipping (price, speed).
Facepalm back at you. It is not an IP thing. Government secrets are not protected under copyright, but under state secret. You can not just make up laws when they are not on the books.
“Amazon’s point of view” which you “don’t see a problem with” is fantasy unsupported by the legislation. Or else the police would be knocking on the door of The Guardian for IP violation. Something they are not doing, because a government under its own law is unable to copyright its stuff and once made public passes to the public domain.
This isn’t Ali G, communist anti-IP theory, or ancap anti-IP theory. This is the law as it exists in the US and all of the western world and Amazon’s PR service should have consulted its lawyers before talking rubbish.
Everyone, hold your horses for just a second. Let’s establish a few things:
We’re all Austrians here. Thus, we should all agree that Amazon can do whatever it damn well pleases to do with its own servers.
Amazon is a publicly traded company. Amazon.com, Inc. has a duty to its stockholders, i.e. it ought to try to be as profitable as possible. Hosting a very controversial website on one’s servers is NOT a very sound business decision. Amazon was only acting in the interest of its shareholders.
If you think there was no government pressure on Amazon, you are wrong. If you think there wasn’t going to be even more government pressure on Amazon, you are wrong. If you’ve learned anything from Wikileaks, it ought to be that the US federal government is very coercive and it uses underhand strong arm tactics against “friends” and foes alike. Think about that statement for a little while.