WyBlog

WikiLeaks, the website that published a quarter-million sensitive diplomatic cables on Sunday, is using Amazon.com Inc. servers in the U.S. to help deliver its information.

The site cablegate.wikileaks.org, which WikiLeaks is using for the diplomatic documents, is linked to servers run by Amazon Web Services in Seattle. Wikileaks.org, the site's front page, links back to Amazon servers in the U.S. and in Ireland.

The choice of Amazon, a U.S. company, seems strange given the amount of criticism WikiLeaks has received from the U.S. government.

But experts said it was unlikely that Amazon would face legal action for selling services to WikiLeaks. For one thing, now that the information disclosed by the site is already public, it might not be considered contraband, said Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of law and computer science at Harvard University.

Amazon.com has severed ties with controversial website WikiLeaks, the organization that just released a trove of sensitive U.S. State Department documents.

On Wednesday, the main website and the "cablegate" sub-site devoted to the diplomatic documents were unavailable from the U.S. and Europe. Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said that Amazon told him of the decision to end the relationship between the two companies.

"This morning Amazon informed my staff that it has ceased to host the WikiLeaks website," Leiberman said in a public statement. "The company's decision to cut off WikiLeaks now is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies WikiLeaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material," he said in a statement.

"I call on any other company or organization that is hosting WikiLeaks to immediately terminate its relationship with them," Lieberman added.