Were Amazon right to take down Wikileaks? What are the duties of online intermediaries to host or give access to content which may lose them money or customers? Should they have duties to preserve freedom of speech?
1. Lilian Edwards Prof of E-governance Strathclyde law school February 2011 Lilian.edwards@strath.ac.uk Pangloss: http://blogscript.blogspot.com Wikileaks, cybercrime and the role of online intermediaries
2. Timeline 28 Nov 2010: “patriot” DDoSattack hits WikiLeaks as first set of US diplomatic cables is published. 3 December 2010: Amazon Web Services stops hosting Wikileaks, citing ToS; hit by DDOS attacks 3 December 2010: WikiLeaks.org ceases to work for web users after everyDNS.comclaims DDOS attacks against WikiLeaks were disrupting its service provided to other customers. 4 December 2010: PayPal permanently restricts account used by WikiLeaks (later, M/card, Visa, Postfinance) 8 December 2010: DDoS attacks take down PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, “Anonymous” /Operation Payback claims responsibility, using LOIC to create DoS attacks 13 December 2010 : Amazon in Europe goes down for 30 mins - denies DDOS cause
3. Anonymous’s version "We're against corporations and government interfering on the internet," Coldblood added. "We believe it should be open and free for everyone. Governments shouldn't try to censor because they don't agree with it”. Guardian 8 December The First Great Infowar?
5. Collateral risk to other customers “"Having been there personally, I know how hard it is to face a DOS attack, and speaking for ourselves, any decisions made while a full-on shitstorm is being targeted at one's company and business are not political ones, they are ones of survival. I challenge anybody sitting in the comfort of their cozy little bubble existence at home, to sit on the receiving end of a full on DOS attack directed at themselves and then pontificate about 'cowardice' or anything else. Armchair quarterbacks.“ CEO, Easy DNS. What was the corporate social responsibility of AWS? To their users? Customers? The public? Freedom of speech?