

Let Amazon know we're boycotting them because of Wikileaks - adriaanb
http://www.thepoint.com/campaigns/campaign-0-1505

======
jasonkester
Where do I click to let Amazon know that I'm not boycotting them?

I mean really, Amazon is my favorite Big Company right now. They have all
sorts of really cool services to make it easy for small businesses to do their
thing. And every month or so they send me an email telling me that they just
made one of those services _cheaper_.

They also manage to stock every single item of anything that I've needed to
buy online in the last several years, and are capable of getting it to me in 2
days without any hassle whatsoever. They do all the creepy user-tracking stuff
that every other big company does, but somehow manage to pull it off in a way
that is not only not creepy, but actually makes me happy. Hey, Amazon just
told me about the new Black Keys album. That's something I might actually
consider buying. Thanks Amazon!

So yeah, no. I'm not planning to boycott them over some silly internet
controversy that they didn't want anything to do with. Pick a better company
like PayPal or eBay or Microsoft or Facebook or pretty much _anybody_ and I'm
with you. But lay off Amazon. They're cool.

~~~
wmeredith
Right on the "Buy Now" button.

------
CPops
You're free to boycott Amazon if you wish, but I think your expectations of
Amazon are ridiculously high if you expect them to martyr their business
prospects to make a political stand. What were they threatened with? More
sales taxes? IRS audits?

Yes, Amazon's response to this was really weak and cowardly, but let's not
lose sight of who is the real villain in this case — Joe Lieberman and
whatever other elements of the government are complicit in trying to shut down
free speech.

I'd rather boycott Washington D.C. than Amazon.

~~~
araneae
It's not that I expected them to behave differently, I just prefer to give my
money elsewhere where possible now. For instance, I am moving my wedding
registry elsewhere, simply because I prefer not to give them the profit off of
it since it can just as easily be given to other companies.

~~~
tybris
How do you know your new company wouldn't do the same thing in the same
situation?

~~~
araneae
Well, they are generally in the making pottery or weaving sheets business, so
I doubt it would come up.

------
thangalin
Dear Amazon.com,

WikiLeaks offered the government a chance to review the cables before they
went online. They made the offer to ensure that the leaked documents would not
jeopardize lives. The government declined. To date, no leaked documents by
WikiLeaks have resulted in any harm coming to any individual. While the past
cannot be used as a measure of the future, it does support the notion that
such releases will likely cause intractable harm in reputation rather than
flesh.

Although WikiLeaks does not own the content, the scope of the content reveals
a problem with the United States: that people in power are more corrupt than
could otherwise have been known. If exposing truth and honesty while holding
governments and corporations accountable to moral lessons of right and wrong
is insufficient cause for Amazon.com to overlook its self-imposed terms of
service, then the owners of Amazon.com have taken the moral low-ground. And I
shall have nothing to do with them.

This a complex issue, with many arguments on both sides, yet one fact remains:
WikiLeaks has published Truth. And if Truth stirs trouble, then we, as a
society, have failed. We have failed our peers. We have failed our governing.
And we have failed our children.

And now? I shall tell hundreds of friends.

~~~
avner
The matter at hand transcends into international politics of the highest
order. It is not some website that someone created to opine on their
dissatisfaction with the government and hence were ordered to take it down.
Its a website that hosted classified documents that don't belong to them, and
were obtained illegally. No cognizant web-host in the US would want to host
such content, if they want to remain in the business without an agenda. Amazon
does not have to subscribe to some social contract that obligates them to
submit to an organization like Wikileaks. As crass as it may sound, Amazon's
in it for the money, not international politics.

Your expectations from Amazon, while noble, unfortunately do not translate
into what is practically tactical for Amazon from a business' point of view.
Any other US host would have yanked wikileaks out too. It is unfair to only
subject Amazon to such high morality.

~~~
bitbutter
"Its a website that hosted classified documents that don't belong to them, and
were obtained illegally. No cognizant web-host in the US would want to host
such content"

Of course they would, and you know they will. Or do you really believe that
Amazon will refuse to carry any product, over the coming years, that quotes
from the leaked documents that are already in the public domain?

"As crass as it may sound, Amazon's in it for the money, not international
politics."

Of course, and that's why a boycott is an appropriate response from people who
feel negatively towards their decision; to submit to political pressure, and
selectively apply their terms of use rules.

"Any other US host would have yanked wikileaks out too. It is unfair to only
subject Amazon to such high morality."

I disagree. Whichever US host dropped wikileaks under these circumstances
would have been a legitimate target for a boycott.

Amazon faced a difficult decision for sure, but handled it exceptionally badly
wrt maintaining customer trust. Had there been even a hint of contrition in
their statement, I (and I'm guessing others) may have felt less animosity
towards them.

------
gte910h
I actually think they did hurt themselves here: I now have to say to clients
who I'd otherwise push towards their cloud services:

"If you get a national politician unhappy with your product, they do have a
history of pulling the plug on people, see wikileaks".

While that's not a boycott, that is a move from a strong buy to a "consider
other options if you have any chance of pissing someone off".

I do think Joe Liberman single handedly handed cloud computing to non-american
countries though with his stunt. Why base your cloud here when your company
gets better data protection in :insert jurisdiction which doesn't give a crap
about Joe Liberman's threats:

~~~
tybris
They probably would have hurt themselves more by keeping wikileaks and
becoming the center of attention during the Christmas period, receiving the
fury of conservative America, and losing major government contracts.

~~~
gte910h
Amazon was screwed either way. This way however, they have compromised their
cloud service's future (instead of their online retailer's present). It's not
their fault they had to choose whom to piss off. They did however turn
themselves from a whitebox solutions provider to a curated whitebox solutions
provider though with this decision.

~~~
adriaanb
What do you think would happen if Amazon didn't shut down Wikileaks?

~~~
gte910h
A call on FoxNews to boycott them most likely.

------
Umalu
Amazon's choice: (1) host Wikileaks and risk getting shut down, or (2) drop
Wikileaks, get boycotted. If choice (2) is as bad as choice (1), something I
guess the boycotters hope for, then Amazon's choice is a Morton's fork: two
equally bad outcomes. Why don't the boycotters stick their Morton's fork where
it belongs: into those who wrote and enforce the laws they object to?

~~~
rbarooah
Because Amazon does not appear to have been compelled by law, so there's no
law to change - just a vague sense of not wanting to be on the wrong side of
powerful people. This is how the mafia works. It shouldn't be how the
government works.

~~~
jared314
The people at Amazon might not actually like Wikileaks or the PR it brings.
The government might not have anything to do with it.

~~~
rbarooah
Except that we know that the government did contact Amazon and ask them to
stop hosting wikileaks.

------
jambo
HN readers might be interested to know that this site, The Point, is the basis
for Groupon.

<http://www.groupon.com/about>

------
boringuser
Put yourself in Bezos' shoes. If hosting WikiLeaks could potentially make you
the victim of DDOS attacks, cause you bad PR, open you to lawsuits, give you
trouble with the government, etc, etc, would you really put your company, its
employees, everything you have worked for at risk to support this political
activism, even if you did believe in it? It's easy enough to say what you
think Amazon should do, but if you were the one making the decision it might
be more difficult than you imagine.

------
endlessvoid94
The holiday season is here. Boycotting amazon isn't going to do a damn thing.

The average consumer has no clue that amazon has anything to do with the tech
industry. To most people it's just an online store.

~~~
jdp23
The holiday season is the best possible time for a boycott of any retailer.
Last-minute shopping hasn't happened yet, and for most people, there are good
alternatives for most of what Amazon carries.

More on why a boycott could have a big impact at
<http://www.talesfromthe.net/jon/?p=2201>

~~~
endlessvoid94
Agreed.

But I'm saying that the vast majority of Amazon's customers are not software
developers. They're soccer moms, busy middle class honest workers who don't
know a damn thing about AWS or even that Amazon had anything to do with
wikileaks.

They don't care. They'll buy from wherever is cheapest/most convenient.

~~~
jdp23
Well, it's not just software developers who are fired up about free speech but
putting that aside more a moment...

The soccer moms, teachers, honest workers, etc. in my and my SO's family would
almost certainly honor our requests to "please don't get us anything via
Amazon" -- especially if we give them alternative sources. Some of them would
be interested enough in it that we'd discuss it and probably convince at least
a few that this is a serious problem and they want to get involved. Most
people have at least a few friends who are sympathetic; as people start
posting about it on Facebook, others will see and at least a few will decide
to get involved. Plus there are some family mailing lists (mostly used to
exchange bad jokes) and people there tend to defer to my expertise on computer
stuff. So we'll probably pick up a few more there ...

And internationally, my guess is that feelings are a lot stronger. It's
fascinating watching the discussion on Twitter -- there's so much in other
languages. Initial momentum for a boycott seem strongest in Spain right now
... and no surprise, given the revelations in the cables. From abroad, it
looks like an American company trying to censor the world's access to
information, so I could imagine a boycott having a bit impact there.

------
Tichy
I must admit, while I thought it a pity that Amazon took that step, I think
their strong point is selling books and stuff, not politics. I can understand
why hosting Wikileaks might have seemed too risky.

~~~
adriaanb
They also sell books about politics, but it's about the AWS and Amazon
selectively shutting down it's services towards clients.

~~~
endlessvoid94
Businesses toss clients and customers all the time when they become
unmanageable or too costly (or a drain on them).

------
pedalpete
Like most hosting services, AWS has rules in there terms about what can be
hosted. Agree with wikileaks or not, I think there is little debate that the
documents were obtained illegally. Therefore, AWS was right to take them down
from a business standpoint.

I'll probably get downvoted for saying 'obtained illegally', but I'm talking
about the guy who downloaded the docs, not the guy who posted them. I think
the worst Wikileaks could be charged with would be purchasing stolen property.

------
tybris
I'm not. If I objected to every company that ever did something morally
questionable in the interest of their business I'd be naked, homeless and
starve to death.

------
DjDarkman
The moral of this story: if you want to publish something embarrassing to
politicians, do it somewhere were they can't abuse their power/influence.

~~~
rbarooah
Where do you suggest?

------
Silhouette
From the site, as I write this (an hour or so after this link was posted and
hit the front page of HN):

> Amazon should be made aware of the scale of public opposition to what
> they’ve done.

> If we reach at least 1,000 people, then We will each mail Amazon letting
> them know why we won't be buying from them anymore.

> 1%, 989 people to go

If that's not irony, I don't know what is.

In any case, I don't see the objection here. A lot of Internet warriors seem
to be almost zealous in their support of Wikileaks and their belief that the
various large-scale releases they have made recently are somehow changing the
nature of society and making governments fundamentally more transparent.

Wikileaks are quick to say that governments have not identified specific
people hurt or killed because of the leaks. However, looking at things from a
slightly more neutral point of view, it seems equally true that Wikileaks
haven't really told us anything big we didn't already know, or at least
suspect. They have created a lot of hype, disruption and embarrassment, but
where's the huge smoking gun? I'm in the UK, and so far there has been
commentary on our politicians as with many other places, but there's no
evidence that our government ordered a hit on Dr David Kelly, or that Tony
Blair had more information than we already knew from the public inquiries
about whether Iraq really had WMDs, or that our then-government's support for
the US action against a lot of popular opinion was a result of some corrupt
deal for personal gain by the politicians calling the shots. Frankly, the
leaks have so far been rather anti-climactic.

Also, just as an aside, the whole "we offered to let the government help us
vet the material" argument is just transparent politics. We are talking about
hundreds of thousands of documents. To even _try_ to vet that data in any
useful depth, the time needed from security-cleared and fully informed
officials, and the amount of taxpayers' money it would cost would be
staggering. Please don't tell me Wikileaks weren't well aware of that. And
that's without even getting into the "we don't negotiate with enemies" ethics.

Given this sort of mess, I don't blame Amazon for not wanting any part of it.
The fact that Wikileaks and various embarrassed government officials are
having a very public pissing match is not a reason for independent businesses
to start taking sides. More pragmatically, given the aforementioned lack of
any real substance in the leaks, it is highly likely that the governments are
going to win this one, and no business on the scale of Amazon wants to be out
of favour with major national governments. There just isn't anything in it for
them.

~~~
adriaanb
'not a reason for independent businesses to start taking sides' That's the
whole point, they did.

'it seems equally true that Wikileaks haven't really told us anything big we
didn't already know, or at least suspect' I disagree on this and they aren't
done yet. So you don't know what is next. Besides, why would you shut
something down that isn't a real threat(yet)?

~~~
Silhouette
Well, OK, Amazon removing themselves from the whole situation is passively
taking the side of the governments, but it's rather different to actively
hosting anti-Wikileaks propaganda or telling the CIA that they know where
Julian Assange is this afternoon.

As for the rest of it, we've been hearing that Wikileaks are not done yet for
a long time. If they are genuinely interested in transparency rather than
raising their profile and/or causing extended embarrassment to people they
don't like, then why haven't they just published everything on their web site
for all to see? Transparency theatre is becoming as tedious (and
unconstructive) as security theatre, and it's time for Wikileaks to s@#t or
get off the pot.

~~~
rbarooah
I suspect this reaction is exactly why Wikileaks is metering out the
information - each time they reveal some wrongdoing, it will be _new_
wrongdoing and hence newsworthy, whereas each time people scream for
Wikileaks's head it will be the same shrill cry.

I think Wikileaks is hoping that over time, the repetitive anger at them
becomes boring, whilst the corruption they uncover becomes the more
interesting part of the story.

I suspect they are deliberately releasing only mildly embarrassing information
at first as a form of innoculation so that when they get to the really
damaging stuff Wikileaks itself will be old news and people will focus on the
more unpleasant truths.

~~~
Silhouette
> I think Wikileaks is hoping that over time, the repetitive anger at them
> becomes boring, whilst the corruption they uncover becomes the more
> interesting part of the story.

I appreciate that you probably hadn't seen it when you wrote the parent post,
but it appears that the big Wikileaks story for today is a list of facilities
that are considered critical to US security.

I'm not sure I see any corruption exposed, or any other public interest for
that matter, in publishing such information openly. How can this possibly do
anything except make it easier for the bad guys to cause significant damage?

If they carry on in this direction, releasing ever more sensitive information
that really might have national security implications, then I can only see any
public support they have deteriorating and the arguments of governments that
some information must be kept secret for national security reasons being
strengthened.

The end result will probably be a terrible disappointment for conspiracy
theorists, reassurance to many people that most of our governments are not in
fact secretly planning world domination and merely make mistakes from time to
time, and a new era of locking down anything that might be considered even
remotely sensitive within governments to the extent that we might even see
changes in the laws that currently protect whistle-blowing that is genuinely
in the public interest.

It would be an ironic, and unwelcome, legacy for Wikileaks if its big campaign
ultimately resulted in more people believing in arbitrary government secrecy
and tighter controls on free speech just in case anyone else as irresponsible
comes along in future.

~~~
rbarooah
Agreed. I personally think wikileaks only possible value is if it exposes
actual corruption. Simply revealing sensitive information that weakens the US
but doesn't reveal wrongdoing seems like a terrible mistake.

------
to
i would reject everyone and everything of the official sites that go against
wikileaks. like the icann will possibly at some point or paypal for cutting of
donations or twitter if they ever kill the wikileaks account but amazon is a
hoster that was getting ddos'ed. every normal hoster wouldve dropped your page
if you harm their business others pay a lot of money for in some cases.

