I too think Amazon wouldn't have taken down the NYT.
On the other hand, had WL not violated the AWS AUP, I also don't think Amazon would have taken them down, either.
The point is, if you don't violate the Amazon ToS, this is a non-issue (outside of personal politics, which is a fine reason not to do business with them, but a bit out of scope for this discussion.)
If you post public-domain material to your site, you don't "own, or otherwise control all the rights" to it. There is no jurisprudence that says posting public-domain material isn't exactly what Wikileaks did. (People with security clearance have been successfully prosecuted for publicly leaking/publishing classified information; no recipient lacking security clearance ever has)
If the rest of the TOS is full of stuff like that, it would be doubtful it would even be possible to run a significant site without in some way violating the TOS. According to that TOS, one user-submitted comment of copyrighted content and your website could immediately be permanently pulled, even if you took the comment down as fast as humanly possible.
>If you post public-domain material to your site, you don't "own, or otherwise control all the rights" to it.
I think you'll find that you do.
You own that copy that you are presenting for distribution, no one else owns it nor has rights over it, you do (at least in copyright terms, PD could still have trademark and other issues).
The right to prevent other people copying it is exhausted, there is no [copy]right there to own so it's not a legal right that you don't have. That other people own other copies and have control of all the available rights to their copies is immaterial.
That said I think you're clutching at straws classified documents are not in the public domain unless they have been published by someone with the right to do so and the copyright term in the relevant jurisdiction has expired.
There are about 30 states IIRC that aren't signatories to Berne Convention or relevant parts of TRIPS, etc..
[if] one user-submitted comment of copyrighted content and your website could immediately be permanently pulled, even if you took the comment down as fast as humanly possible.
Does that sound credible to you? Does that seem like a reasonable comparison? I'm done arguing about WL on a thread about a new Amazon web service now.
What exactly was the violation of the ToS again? Honest question, I really don't know.
At any rate, I'd amend your "if you don't violate the ToS" to "if you don't attract a phone call from a cranky old senator's office", since that's what seems to have prompted the action.
Right, except Wikileaks did not violate the TOS. Classified material cannot, by law, be copyrighted. Once leaked, it is public domain. Amazon's claim otherwise was completely disingenuous and dishonest.
Is classification copyright? I get the feeling that people are conflating the two issues. I don't know if classification goes with copyright but my general sense is that they aren't linked.
I'd say disclosure of classified information presents a greater risk than distributing copyrighted materials. I really don't think "copyright" is the issue at all here.
Humans generally argue to seek truth or status or both. It's a disaster that status-seeking gets involved in the process of truth-seeking, and I wish that we all would recognize that and avoid it when we can (to the extent that we can). "Please, help yourself to the last word" strikes me as motivated by status competition.
Try taking the words at their face value, instead. The motivation is avoiding another 20-comment thread that spends 70% of its time dancing around the subtext of one commenter liking WL and the other commenter not liking WL.
Try what Wikipedia tries to do: Assume Good Faith. There are people on HN I, too, have a hard time doing that with, so if you're not assuming good faith because of a 'tptacek issue, please feel free to email me about it.
Pedantry doesn't suit this discussion well. You are correct that the word copyright was not specified. What was specified was that they hosted content they do not own.
By this standard, I fully expect AWS to terminate services to EVERY SINGLE forum, review site, message board, webmail service, and any other site that does not explicitly state in their own terms of service that every byte of user-generated content is the exclusive property of the site itself.
In addition, I expect any AWS customer hosting IETF RFCs, software with public domain licenses, and public domain poetry to be shut down immediately.
If AWS fails to do this, they are being discriminatory and capricious in pursuing TOS violations.
Your reply seems pedantic as well. All your examples have implicit or explicit permission from the authors for the sites to post their material, as I'm sure you're well aware of.
The agreement states you must "own or otherwise control all rights to the content". Merely having permission to display the content is not sufficient.
If I were to be cynical, I'd say that the purpose of that clause is to allow Amazon to take down any site they want and have a credible excuse. Realistically it's probably just some over-zealous lawyer, but either way it has that very effect (as Amazon has demonstrated).
On the other hand, had WL not violated the AWS AUP, I also don't think Amazon would have taken them down, either.
The point is, if you don't violate the Amazon ToS, this is a non-issue (outside of personal politics, which is a fine reason not to do business with them, but a bit out of scope for this discussion.)