Amazon sells Wikileaks cables (but presumably not for much longer)

Posted December 9, 2010 in ephemera  |  4 Comments so far

In a bizarre twist, Amazon is currently selling a Kindle book that contains the Wikileaks diplomatic cables. Obviously it’s not going to be up for much longer but it’s still a strange development:

As you’d expect lots of fun is being had with Amazon’s user-generated tags:

But the reviewers who are laying into Amazon are missing the point, which is that the book is obviously going to be taken down in the next few hours, if not minutes. There’s no way anyone at Amazon has done this deliberately – a Kindle seller has uploaded this and it’ll be gone soon.

It’s either naked commercial opportunism or a cheeky prank. Even still, it’s pretty odd.

Update at 18:11 GMT – well I was wrong, a few hours have passed and the book is still on sale. And Amazon can hardly be oblivious given that even the BBC has picked up on it:

“In a twist to the story it has emerged that Amazon, which last week refused to host Wikileaks, is selling a Kindle version of the documents Wikileaks has leaked…”

So what’s going on at Amazon? Are they just being cynical?

Update at 21:11 GMT – it’s finally been taken down! I wonder what’ll happen to the copies that people bought and downloaded? Will Amazon offer refunds?

"Bye bye book"


4 comments so far.  Post a comment

  1. Cathy
    December 9, 2010 at 2:47 pm [ Permalink

    They can’t spell hypocrisy…

  2. December 9, 2010 at 2:50 pm [ Permalink

    That made me laugh. Although maybe the people tagging it “hypocracy” are making up a new word meaning ‘government by hypocrites’?

    …no, on balance I think they’re just bad spellers.

  3. Cathy
    December 9, 2010 at 2:58 pm [ Permalink

    Oh yeah – maybe. Good coinage then!

  4. Lindsey
    December 10, 2010 at 5:00 pm [ Permalink

    “hypocracy” is a good one….I was sad that it probably wasn’t intentional :(

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