Dear Amazon.

You know me. I don't mean that an Amazon employee reading this knows me, but Amazon as a company, as a database, as an corporate entity that breathes data knows me well. I'm a regular customer, I'm in your files. I like shopping with the Amazon UK website. You get so many things just right. As you know better than I do, I come back and I spend money with you almost every month. I've even purchased and sang the praises of your kindle e-reader.

For once, I am deeply disappointed in you. This is because of your decision to sever your hosting with Wikileaks.

I am disappointed as a reader who values free speech that the world's biggest bookstore does not always share that value. As has been said before, the test of freedom of speech is when unpopular things are said; freedom to say only popular things is not freedom of speech at all.

I appreciate that a hosting provider has two responsibilities - firstly a responsibility to host the content of all paying customers. The other responsibility is to comply with government and other requests so that fraudulent, defamatory, copyright-violating or other illegal content can be removed. There will be times that these two responsibilities come into conflict. And how do we mediate between these two? Isn't there some kind of framework to guide us?

You know the answer. Of course there is such a framework. It is in law. A responsible hosting provider would comply swiftly with any takedown request that has legal force, but only with such requests. I do not believe that in the year 2010 that this has to be done in an ad-hoc manner; there is no shortage of laws or legal precedent to use. For instance, the DMCA has been in force in the USA since 1998, and similar laws have been in force in the EU since 2001.

However, Amazon has put itself in the position of making decisions on what was and what was not legally hostable content, and doing so shortly after political but extra-legal pressure in a high-profile case. It is puzzling as to why Amazon would wish to deliberately take sides in this dispute, as it leaves you no clear answer to to inflamatory claims that you are "an instrument of Anerican foreign policy". Wikileaks may be in the wrong here, but surely that is for a court to decide? And if not, do they not deserve to be hosted? If, as you say, the law is on your side, then why aren't you making use of it?

This is a dangerous precedent. After this decision, how does Amazon aim to sell their services as reliable?  What exactly is Amazon guaranteeing - the hosting of agreeable websites only? Reliable only as long as there is no political pressure?

And I am disappointed as a computer professional that Amazon Web Services, a world leader in cloud computing does not take reliability or customer contracts seriously. What can one say about guaranteed uptime when it is clear that a quiet word from a powerful man is enough to have your site removed from the web?

Your decision make it less likely that I will buy computing services or recommend that other buy computing services from Amazon.