I’m sure you have all heard about Amazon’s decision to stop hosting the WikiLeaks website and given my interests (and career!) in web technologies this is something I’ve been giving a lot of thought to over the past few days. My opinions have changed while I’ve been thinking about it so I’m going to tell the story of my reasoning as a backdrop to what I have (for now) concluded is the real underlying issue. This isn’t about WikiLeaks and it isn’t about Amazon but given the ongoing WikiLeaks debacle and Amazon’s enviable position in online retail and web services, these organisations and the relationship between them makes for a great case study in the deeper issue of the role of technology in our lives today.