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[olemars]

It's not that I don't see anything wrong with it, no. I quite dislike it. But I'm fairly sure they possess the full legal right to do so. What I don't follow is how this counts as censorship, per se. Amazon are not the government and they are not the sole repository of books (or e-books). While the kindle-pulling thing seems annoying, I don't quite see it as much more than that--an annoyance. I mean, the skeevy convenience store down the street from me sells those paperback "erotic" novels for $5.99, its not like Amazon is wiping them from existence or anything.

People seem to have gotten so acquiescent with corporate abuse... Amazon violated their own terms of service by deleting stuff from people's kindles. Would you accept if Barns&Noble showed up at your house and yanked the book you were reading out of your hands because it was "recalled"?

[Earthquake Damage]

the news of our attack was unable to be published

By its nature, the attack would not be classified.  Not all media published the classified information.  Therefore some media would be very much able to publish the attack.

People seem to have gotten so acquiescent with corporate abuse... Amazon violated their own terms of service by deleting stuff from people's kindles. Would you accept if Barns&Noble showed up at your house and yanked the book you were reading out of your hands because it was "recalled"?

Cue rant about selling licenses instead of goods.

[MrWiggles]

It's not that I don't see anything wrong with it, no. I quite dislike it. But I'm fairly sure they possess the full legal right to do so. What I don't follow is how this counts as censorship, per se. Amazon are not the government and they are not the sole repository of books (or e-books). While the kindle-pulling thing seems annoying, I don't quite see it as much more than that--an annoyance. I mean, the skeevy convenience store down the street from me sells those paperback "erotic" novels for $5.99, its not like Amazon is wiping them from existence or anything.

People seem to have gotten so acquiescent with corporate abuse... Amazon violated their own terms of service by deleting stuff from people's kindles. Would you accept if Barns&Noble showed up at your house and yanked the book you were reading out of your hands because it was "recalled"?

Were did they violate their own  ToS?

[Leafsnail]

Despite what we are led to believe, Al Qaeda has the internet.

They have read through all of Wikileaks, I assure you.

And launched a wave of terrible, crippling attacks on top secret major ports and oil rigs.

Keep in mind that companies cannot all be considered seperate from the military. I, for one, would want BAE systems to be able to censor information to the same extent as the military.

I, for one, would like them to stop selling weapons to dictators and oppressive regimes and wasting taxpayers money.  Seriously, there's all sorts of stuff that they'd love to censor.

[olemars]

It's not that I don't see anything wrong with it, no. I quite dislike it. But I'm fairly sure they possess the full legal right to do so. What I don't follow is how this counts as censorship, per se. Amazon are not the government and they are not the sole repository of books (or e-books). While the kindle-pulling thing seems annoying, I don't quite see it as much more than that--an annoyance. I mean, the skeevy convenience store down the street from me sells those paperback "erotic" novels for $5.99, its not like Amazon is wiping them from existence or anything.

People seem to have gotten so acquiescent with corporate abuse... Amazon violated their own terms of service by deleting stuff from people's kindles. Would you accept if Barns&Noble showed up at your house and yanked the book you were reading out of your hands because it was "recalled"?

Were did they violate their own  ToS?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200144530

Use of Digital Content. Upon your payment of the applicable fees set by Amazon, Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Digital Content will be deemed licensed to you by Amazon under this Agreement unless otherwise expressly provided by Amazon.

Termination. Your rights under this Agreement will automatically terminate without notice from Amazon if you fail to comply with any term of this Agreement. In case of such termination, you must cease all use of the Software and Amazon may immediately revoke your access to the Service or to Digital Content without notice to you and without refund of any fees. Amazon's failure to insist upon or enforce your strict compliance with this Agreement will not constitute a waiver of any of its rights.

[Phmcw]

So if Amazon is to sell one book, they must sell every book they can get the rights to sell?  That's ridiculous.

Perhaps you meant they shouldn't be allowed to discriminate against customers, so they can't refuse to sell to a KKK member for ideological reasons.

Not exactly... for one, the amazon thing was taken as an example, and may have been a bad one : editor have an editorial line, and the right to choose what they publish of course. I'm not sure of the job of Amazon there, and I expeced that they worked like some kind of "ebay" exept with editors as sellers.

So, for a better understanding, Ebay shouldn't have the right to block you from selling a legal book for political reason.
And visa shouldn't have the right to block a donation to a legal organization without a decision of justice.

[ed boy]

Termination. Your rights under this Agreement will automatically terminate without notice from Amazon if you fail to comply with any term of this Agreement. In case of such termination, you must cease all use of the Software and Amazon may immediately revoke your access to the Service or to Digital Content without notice to you and without refund of any fees. Amazon's failure to insist upon or enforce your strict compliance with this Agreement will not constitute a waiver of any of its rights.

Your rights under this Agreement will automatically terminate without notice from Amazon if you fail to comply with any term of this Agreement.

What it does not say is:

Your rights under this Agreement will automatically terminate without notice from Amazon if and only if you fail to comply with any term of this Agreement.

All the terms of service says is "If you fail to comply with the terms, then your rights will terminate". It does not say that that is the only way your rights can be terminated.

[Sowelu]

I'm pretty sure contracts do not work that way.

[ed boy]

That might not be the spirit of the contract, but that is what the letter says.

[Shrugging Khan]

Generally speaking: To speak out in favour of censorship is to speak out against being informed, and against being able to make a qualified participation in the democratic process.
To keep knowledge from the people is almost as good as to just chain them to assembly lines - it reduces them from the sovereign to the subject.

Which, of course, may be fine. After all, the position that the people, in general, just aren't capable of correctly analysing and/or comprehending complex information...well, it's not exactly wrong.

[Graebeard]

It's not that I don't see anything wrong with it, no. I quite dislike it. But I'm fairly sure they possess the full legal right to do so. What I don't follow is how this counts as censorship, per se. Amazon are not the government and they are not the sole repository of books (or e-books). While the kindle-pulling thing seems annoying, I don't quite see it as much more than that--an annoyance. I mean, the skeevy convenience store down the street from me sells those paperback "erotic" novels for $5.99, its not like Amazon is wiping them from existence or anything.

I suppose it depends on how we define censorship, but I think we can all agree that it's not required for the government to be involved to call it censorship.  I mean, the American government and many others certainly have censored things in the past.  That's one reason we've go strong 1st Amendment protections against government action.

But there are plenty of other ways to censor.  Denying access to publishing services is one common concrete example.  Byzantine TOS and stingy licenses help businesses carry out this kind of censorship.  This seems to be the exact reason that network neutrality is such a big deal: because we want to prevent service providers from affecting our access to publish and consume information, even if it just means a slower connection to google news or the hassle of going through a proxy.

Historically we've seen a lot of regulation of new businesses as they've come to dominate the economic landscape.  Trains and phone companies are "common carriers" and subject to restrictions in the services they provide because of it.  Is it time to recognize some newer businesses as similarly influential and similarly limit the terms of service they can offer?  Google, Amazon, Visa, Mastercard, Ebay (paypal) Comcast & At&t all come to mind.  Or is that going too far.

[Insightful comment about line drawing problems]

Maybe one way we can address this problem is by placing stronger restrictions on larger companies or in industries that are limited to only a few service providers.  I'm not as worried about your service provider kicking you off or censoring you if you have a handful of competitors to turn to.  On the other hand, if there are only a few, or if it's very difficult for you to do business with a competitor, maybe we should limit a corporation's right to terminate an agreement or censor content.

[Eagleon]

I'm seeing this tolerated and ignored more and more, privately and in the government. The censors are testing the limits, and people are letting them, so they're testing them more. Just because a contract gives a company the legal right to censor people, doesn't mean you shouldn't be pissed off about it and not use that company until they change.

Any time someone trades love of convenience and security for love of freedom, it's more than a little scary to me. For people that think half-assed censorship of an ideology helps fight it, you've got hundreds of years of history to read; this is a time-honored and very real slippery slope camel nose.

[Sowelu]

History has proven that, while it is a slippery slope, it also comes with a ladder.  Things get worse and worse, then they gradually get better.  I sympathize, but I'm not yet at the point where it matters enough to me to get involved.  It may well hit that tipping point, but I can't spend all my time worrying about every cause.

[LordNagash]

Maybe one way we can address this problem is by placing stronger restrictions on larger companies or in industries that are limited to only a few service providers.  I'm not as worried about your service provider kicking you off or censoring you if you have a handful of competitors to turn to.  On the other hand, if there are only a few, or if it's very difficult for you to do business with a competitor, maybe we should limit a corporation's right to terminate an agreement or censor content.

More competition also helps in the way that if you're known as the company that is overly happy with censorship and there's a viable alternative with most other factors roughly equal, most people would prefer to go with the competitor, and thus it kind of self-corrects a bit.

The problem with trying to limit rights to terminate agreements or censor content is the international nature of the Internet. It's hard to regulate across a whole load of different countries, as you see with stuff like copyright law. Another problem is that a lot of people just don't understand either the Internet or censorship. For every policymaker that has no idea about the internet you have some guy screaming that his first amendment rights are being violated on an internet forum (that may not even be hosted in America anyway)

Something definitely needs to be done to prevent a repeat performance of all of this, though. I think the part that really gets me about the whole Wikileaks thing is Visa, Mastercard and Paypal somehow deciding they have the right to deny transactions to an organisation that has committed no crimes. That is just not their decision, as far as I'm concerned.

[olemars]

In a slight twist, danish newspaper Politiken is hosting a wikileaks mirror. The twist? That's an Amazon AWS server.