Tag Archive: cablegate: Social Memory Complex

Liberty is the Mother, Not the Daughter, of Any Market Worth Having

I haven't weighed in much on Wikileaks because everything I'd write has been written by better writers. Readers here shouldn't need to resort to wild speculation as to my position: Wikileaks is in the absolute right on each and every matter, and the government as per usual in the wrong. Cablegate is just the latest in a series of heroic and perilous pantsings administered by Assange et al. The weakness of the lumbering, bureaucratic monolith of the U.S. government is exposed for all to see if they choose; it remains to be seen whether Americans care.

My interest today has more to do with Amazon.com's booting of Wikileaks from their web services hosting. The Amazon Web Services statement explains the supposed motivations are not the result of Joe Lieberman's bullying - the tone suggesting outrage that anybody would dare think Amazon.com would cave to such pressure. Instead, they provide two reasons for their decision:

  1. Wikileaks' supposed violation of their terms of service because they do not own the content they are publishing (even though the public pays for it)

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    Written on Thursday, December 02, 2010
    Tags: libertarianism, markets, economics, censorship, wikileaks, cablegate
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