Wikileaks Iraq War Logs vanish from Amazon US

WikiLeaks' "Iraq War Logs" site is no longer hosted on US-based servers operated by Amazon.com, according to internet records. Warlogs.wikileaks.org is now mirrored only on Ireland-based Amazon servers and France-based servers from French service provider Octopuce, records collected by UK-based internet research outfit …

[Cris E]

Preparing for a surge that didn't materialize?

My guess is the Amazon host was only there in anticipation of a huge crush of interested readers or a DoS attack from the govt. Now that the initial wave has passed and there are copies out in the wild they can drop the huge server option to reduce the legal risks and avoid some costs. Occam's razor and all that.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Can I be the first to say....

If you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide.

[Simpson]

attack?

I don't think that they would need to attack or ddos wikileaks. Plus, that would just give them more press.

Just raise their costs.

I'd think that the U.S. gov (and friends) have plenty of bandwidth available. All they need to do, is start downloading large files from WL, millions of times per day. They could start with a couple of dozen downloads, then just double it every day.

At some point you will bankrupt them, or their provider, or their provider's provider. Nobody would be willing to host them. Maybe an "evil" government would host them, but any company interested in turning a profit would not.

[Daniel Evans]

Two things

a) I doubt Wikileaks is low bandwidth anyway, and I'd expect them to have a wee bit of spare capacity.

b) I suspect that using up all of a certain website's bandwidth to get it off the air is slightly illegal, and all of it coming from el-prez.us.gov would make it somewhat obvious who did it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yay!

Let's hear it for freedom! (except the stuff we don't like)

[Anonymous Coward]

Cat's otu of the bag

What would be the point of attacking wikileaks? Cats out of the bag.

If they would attack the site and DDoS it down, or make so much traffic that it would bankrupt them wikileaks could just release the files in torrents. Good luck with DDoS:ing that if the netactivist get mad enough.

The US government has probably realised that attack on the site is futile, and gives only bad PR.

Paris Hilton, as she too probably would have realised it too.

[multipharious]

Amazon S3

Amazon is bloody expensive. I mean that may very well be a statement of the obvious, but they are certainly not the cheapest provider around.