On the limits of free speech

Winer’s explanation is purely speculative, and some might call it a conspiracy theory. But it points to a big issue for free speech in the cloud: what happens if one, smaller customer criticizes a bigger customer? In the Web 1.0 era, if you got kicked off a Web host you just found another. Today, the number of providers like AWS are small. As AWS’s promotion material points out, cloud computing gives smaller outfits the ability to take advantage of high-performance computing.

So are Amazon and Apple jeopardizing small(er)-fry companies to keep their lucrative Federal contracts? What does such action mean for customers of all sizes? That’s what Klint Finley asks in Read/Write Web’s Amazon Web Services, WikiLeaks and the Elephant in the Room.