Berkman Buzz, WikiLeaks Edition

From this week’s Berkman Buzz, Wikileaks Edition, compiled by Rebekah Heacock:

“…as a society, we have reached a place where the only way to protect some sorts of speech on the Internet is through one of only a couple dozen core Internet organizations. Totally ceding decisions about control of politically sensitive speech to that handful of actors, without any legal process or oversight, is a bad idea (worse even than ceding decision to grandstanding politicians). The problem is that an even worse option is to cede these decisions about what content gets to stay up to the owners of the botnets capable of executing large ddos attacks.”
From Hal Roberts’ blog post, Amazon’s Wikileaks Takedown

“While the politicians and reporters are getting a fumbling on-the-job education in the architecture of the Internet (an NPR reporter said, hesitatingly, that it appears as if the server is now in Switzerland), the next question is where does the running stop? When does the situation reach equilibrium? What’s the best outcome for the people of the planet?”
From Dave Winer’s blog post, “WikiLeaks on the run”

“What is troubling and dangerous is that in the internet age, public discourse increasingly depends on digital spaces created, owned and operated by private companies. The result is that one politician has more power than ever to shut down controversial speech unilaterally with one phone call.”
From Rebecca Mackinnon’s post on CNN, “WikiLeaks, Amazon and the new threat to internet speech”

“Here’s the premise: My generation — the Digital Natives, Gen Y — and perhaps the one younger than it views the concept of Wikileaks very differently from older generations. We’ve grown up sharing the intimate details of our lives, we Tweet, we post our location on FourSquare, practically inviting stalkers into our lives…as a result, I believe that we expect more of a radical transparency from others…including our government.”
From Jillian York’s blog post, “Scribblings on Wikileaks: Some Thoughts on Digital Nativism and Transparency”

“The rise of internet hypergiants like Amazon that host servers for hundreds of thousands of clients makes these potential conflicts more clear. If you are dissatisfied with the terms of service of your hosting provider, you can always find another… up to a point. There’s been massive consolidation in the web hosting market, and companies like Amazon are likely to control large shares of the market in the future, both because there are economies of scale in providing low-cost service, and because large server farms can more effectively defend from attacks like DDoS. But if large providers like Amazon won’t take on clients like Wikileaks, they’re forced onto smaller ISPs, which may be more costly and less able to thwart DDoS attacks.”
From Ethan Zuckerman’s blog post, “If Amazon has silenced Wikileaks…”

“State secrets exposed this year by whistle-blower website Wikileaks keep causing the world to shudder. A video showing Iraqi civilians killed by U.S forces; a compilation of tens of thousands of documents about the war in Afghanistan; hundreds of thousands of documents about the war in Iraq; and now 251,287 leaked United States embassy cables. On Global Voices, we have looked at worldwide online citizen media reactions. The leaked documents contain so much information, both journalists and bloggers have struggled to make sense of them. The initial excitement is huge. What happens next?” From Global Voices Online Special Coverage section, “WikiLeaks and the World 2010”