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Right, except Wikileaks did not violate the TOS. Classified material cannot, by law, be copyrighted. Once leaked, it is public domain. Amazon's claim otherwi
by haploid 16y ago
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.
- tptacek 16y agoAmazon never once mentioned copyright. (Please, help yourself to the last word.)
- haploid 16y agoPedantry 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.
- shard 16y agoYour 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.
- alextgordon 16y agoThe 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).
- michaelkeenan 16y agoHumans 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.
- tptacek 16y agoIt's not. 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.
- gonzo 16y agoYeah, OK. Try this, "disclosure does not equate to declassification".
- adolph 16y agoIs 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.
- marcinw 16y agoI'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.