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Was Assange nuts?


http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9199003/Amazon_pulls_WikiLeaks_plug?source=CTWNLE_nlt_pm_2010-12-01

Amazon pulls WikiLeaks plug

WikiLeaks moves URL to Swedish hosting firm after Amazon 'ousted' 
the controversial site
Gregg Keizer

December 1, 2010 (Computerworld)

Amazon has pulled the plug on WikiLeaks, the site that earlier 
this week began releasing a mammoth collection of confidential 
U.S. State Department diplomatic cables.

"WikiLeaks servers at Amazon ousted," said WikiLeaks around 3 p.m. 
Eastern time on its Twitter account. "Free speech the land of the 
free ... fine our $ are now spent to employ people in Europe."

According to reverse IP traces run by Computerworld, WikiLeaks is 
now hosted by a Swedish firm, Bahnhof Internet AB, which is 
headquartered in Uppsala, a city approximately 44 miles north of 
Stockholm.

As of 3:30 p.m. Eastern time, the primary WikiLeaks site was 
available to Computerworld staffers in the U.S., but some attempts 
at reaching the URL failed.

A subsidiary site, Cablegate.wikileaks.org, where the organization 
has published the full text of more than 500 of the over 250,000 
cables in its possession, was also operational. That site had also 
been shifted to Bahnhof Internet's servers.

Earlier in the week, the Cablegate site had been hosted by a 
French firm.

WikiLeaks moved to Amazon's hosting service on Monday, apparently 
as a defensive tactic to avoid or mitigate aggressive 
denial-of-service (DoS) attacks that took the site offline for 
several hours that day and then hammered it again yesterday.

According to Craig Labovitz, chief scientist at Arbor Networks, 
the DoS attacks continued throughout Wednesday morning.

Amazon's hosting terms of service allow it to yank a site off its 
service without cause.

"[Amazon Web Services] reserves the right to refuse service, 
terminate accounts, remove or edit content in its sole 
discretion," the terms state.

Another clause may have also been invoked. "You represent and 
warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the 
content," Amazon's terms continue, "[and] that ... the content you 
supply ... will not cause injury to any person or entity."

On Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said, 
"Whatever are the motives in disseminating these documents, it is 
clear that releasing them poses real risks to real people, and 
often to the very people who have dedicated their own lives to 
protecting others."

Amazon did not reply to queries on Monday about its hosting of 
WikiLeaks, nor did it respond to follow-up questions today.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web 
browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. 
Follow Gregg on Twitter at Twitter @gkeizer, or subscribe to 
Gregg's RSS feed Keizer RSS. His e-mail address is 
gkei...@computerworld.com.

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