Amazon Stops Hosting WikiLeaks Website

Lecturer Ryan Calo discusses the ramifications, or lack there of, facing Amazon.com following their decision to stop hosting the WikiLeaks' website:

 

Amazon.com Inc has stopped hosting WikiLeaks' website after an inquiry by the U.S. Senate Homeland Security Committee amid anger about the release of classified U.S. government documents on the site.

WikiLeaks turned to Amazon to keep its site available after hackers tried to flood it and thus prevent users from accessing the classified information posted. WikiLeaks said Wednesday it was now being hosted by servers in Europe.

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Ryan Calo, a lecturer at Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society, said that under U.S. law, Amazon would likely have been shielded from any possible prosecution by the government over the WikiLeaks document dump.

"It would set a dangerous precedent were companies like Amazon to take down things merely because the senator or another government entity started to ask question about them," Calo said.