Partner Jeffrey Johnson Speaks to Computer World About WikiLeaks and Amazon Cloud Contract
Partner Jeffrey Johnson, a member of Pryor Cashman’s Corporate and Intellectual Property Groups, was interviewed by Computer World for its December 2, 2010 article, “With WikiLeaks, Amazon shows its power over customers – Don't mistake cloud providers for the Swiss; they aren't neutral.”
According to the article by Patrick Thibodeau, Amazon’s cloud servers, in addition to hosting the U.S. Government’s Recovery.gov. stimulus spending website, had recently begun to host WikiLeaks, which last week made public a huge collection of confidential U.S. State Department diplomatic cables. However, when U.S. Senator. Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, called Amazon officials to complain about the company's decision to host WikiLeaks on its cloud servers, Amazon, pursuant to its agreement with WikiLeaks, quickly pulled the plug.
Amazon’s cloud contracts allow it to terminate hosting deals for cause and – at its sole discretion – anything it thinks is illegal, constitutes a regulatory violation or infringes on a third party's rights. As Johnson told Computer World, such contracts “give the provider of these cloud services a lot more discretion than you would ordinarily negotiate with someone who is merely providing you with access to servers that you use to store your data. The boilerplate terms of use “are written in a manner that is quite favorable to the rights and the discretion of the service provider.”
To read the article, please click here.
