
Can we use S3 and EC2 to host free speech? - davewiner
http://scripting.com/stories/2010/12/24/noteToIndependentTechBlogg.html
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trotsky
_Where would I move my sites? Do other vendors have a more clear statement of
what they will and won't do under pressure from the US government?_

I think that's the biggest issue here. I think it's clear that amazon bowed to
US pressure (no matter what their public explanation was), but I imagine the
number of ISPs that would stand by you while they were being called out on the
senate floor would be vanishingly small.

We have a short list of companies that didn't stand by wikileaks, but
ostracizing them while patronizing others simply because they didn't get
tested seems unwise.

They pretty much all have at will terms in their contracts, so you basically
have to rely on their will standing fast once the shit hits the fan.

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guelo
As a hosting provider this seems to have been a horrible business decision on
Amazon's part since now their customers are questioning their reliability. It
actually doesn't make much sense especially considering the paranoid nature of
many of their techie customers. Yes, Amazon has business before the Feds so
they might have wanted to keep them happy up to a certain point, but this
seems to have been a big rash decision if they were just acting on a phone
call from Lieberman.

What I've been wondering, considering how quickly and strangely PayPal,
Mastercard, Visa, also acted, if what really happened here was that they
received some kind of National Security Letter. NSL's are subpoenas from the
government that also include a gag order preventing you from talking about the
letter. NSL's were supposedly ruled unconstitutional after the government had
issued 192,499(!) of them, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are unknown
unchallenged variations of the letter or loopholes that allow the government
to still threaten businesses without them being able to talk about it or
defend themselves.

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prestonaustin
We clearly can't rely on them for 'hotly contested speech' right now. At this
moment this is more of a speech tax, as the speech has not yet been contained
or suppressed. So you can still host speech you want free on S3 and EC2 as
long as you have a plan B if some powerful speech eating weasel comes after
you. This matters quite a bit in a practical sense because your pre-crisis
approaches can leverage Amazon's low capital startup and recurring costs.
Great so long as you don't wed yourself to approaches that only work there.

Of course, if we do all rely on it, it would become an even more obvious point
of control and further suppress diversity in hosting as it is already doing in
a major way. Diversity of hosts across jurisdictions, with diverse upstream
providers is likely to provide surety that free speech will have hosts - but
that suffers if we give all the unchallenged biz to Amazon.

I use heroku on EC2 and S3 quite a bit, and advised others to do so until this
month. I was curious what they would say about process if someone tried to
muscle me out; supposing Lieberman or Biden accept some MPAA inspired line of
reasoning on copyright and seek to squash me or my clients to make some
lobbyists happy, so I asked them:

<http://kommons.com/questions/384>

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mark_l_watson
I don't much like Amazon dropping Wikileaks as a customer but so it goes. I
still do business with them but there are some corporations that I don't. The
larger issue is that empires in decline start acting strangely/poorly.

I had breakfast with several friends yesterday and we cover the political
spectrum. We all agreed that our country (USA) is in a rapid state of decline.
As individuals we all have our own strategies for coping with this.

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stcredzero
Here's a space business opportunity: Launch an orbiting datacenter using a
suitably recalcitrant "flag of convenience." Right now, the only country that
could do anything about your Libertarian free-for-all orbital data-haven would
be the US. You'd have to push things pretty far to have them take you out. I
would advocate launching 3 hardened centers that mirror each other.

Would this be able to protect Wikileaks? Maybe. It depends on who the "flag of
convenience" is. Child pr0n - probably not. (But I don't particularly mind if
they can't find a haven.) Chinese dissidents? China might take a stab at
taking all 3 centers out, but it would be pretty costly to them
diplomatically.

~~~
treespotter
I know very little about spacecraft and orbital jurisdiction so I won't go
there but I'm tempted to suggest another idea.

With distributed network and storage in the private sector, eventually some
corporation would seek out a jurisdiction neutral site from which to run and
coordinate their networks.

Multinationals already do this for tax purposes and utilizing various
loopholes in international treaties. The banking sectors recognizes walled
infrastructure to shield foreign scrutiny both in the formal (eg. Swiss banks)
or informal (international narco drugs organizations, etc.)

Think of Qatar providing cover for Al Jazeera to bring alternative
international voice to global media - small sovereign state will see it to
their strategic interests to protect at least part of its sovereignty and a
transnational network such as the internet will adapt and make the most of it.

Something like Cryptonomicon or those dudes who were building a jurisdiction
neutral on an oil rig but with a more sinister, for profit intent. Like
Wikileaks but for profit, totally fair and balanced.

and so on.

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eli
Why would a company allow anyone to use their products in a way that is likely
to harm the company and cost them more money than the sale brings in?

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angdis
It depends... do you mean just "free speech" or do you mean "free speech" as
in hotly controversial material which makes the hosting provider a lightening-
rod for large-scale systematic DDOS attacks, possibly endangering their
business and the business of thousands who depend on their services?

~~~
PostOnce
Free speech isn't free if there are stipulations. I'm not saying Amazon should
have to let you host whatever you want on their servers, just that if you
can't host controversial speech there, you can't rightly say you have freedom
of speech on that particular service.

~~~
eli
Of course. Did anyone ever claim otherwise?

Amazon has always had a whole list of things you can't say or do while using
their service. You can't use you AWS site to "promote" child pornography even
if it's hosted elsewhere. You can't promote gambling or host pyramid schemes.
You can't use it to post anything "obscene."

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jameskilton
Wikileaks was kicked off Amazon for breaking their Terms of Service:
<http://aws.amazon.com/message/65348/>

Follow Amazon's rules, and you can use their service. Not sure what's so hard
to understand here.

~~~
bbatsell
a) Works produced by the U.S. federal government, with the sole exception of
protected trademarks, are legally in the public domain. Amazon's wording is
unfortunately murky — it does say "own or otherwise control", which can never
apply to works in the public domain, so am I in violation of AWS ToS for
hosting any single file that I do not have full control over? Items in the
public domain, for example, or rights-managed content? If I've purchased a
license to publish rights-managed content for one single usage, I in no way
"own or otherwise control" the content. Where do I stand there?

b) Amazon further claimed that because Wikileaks released 250,000 documents,
that demonstrated that there was no care taken in releasing them and thus they
could cause harm to someone, somewhere. The only problem with this is that _it
is a complete and utter falsity_. At the time, Wikileaks had released less
than 1,000 documents (and at the end of the releases, less than 1,500 to my
knowledge). Every single document released had been pre-cleared and redacted
by five well-respected international newspapers they partnered with.

~~~
firemanx
Has anyone bothered to ask the question of "public domain for who?". I would
assume that works created by the US taxpayers (via the government) would be
public domain for US citizens, but is there a clear cut definition of them
being public domain for non-US citizens? I can think of several restrictions
on such things (such as crypto), that prove otherwise.

If that's the case, does Wikileaks count as a US citizen? I'll admit, I'm
completely unfamiliar with the makeup of the organization outside of Julian
Assange (who is not a US citizen). If Wikileaks couldn't count as a US
citizen, how would they be considered as "owning the data" if the above points
are true?

I ask this not to be contrary or confrontational, but simply because I'm
curious. This occurred to me awhile back but I haven't seen this position
represented since.

~~~
alextgordon
It seems you are correct, the public domain status only applies inside the US.

<http://www.cendi.gov/publications/04-8copyright.html#317>

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16s
I would try nearlyfreespeech.net. They may cave too, but they allow anything
to be hosted provided it is not illegal. They have a page describing
takedowns.

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marshray
If you have to ask the question, then the answer is 'no'.

