Should Private Businesses accept dictated terms by Governments?

Should Information Be Shared or Censored?

How accepting should society be in regards to Freedom of Expression?

Sensitive topics that have been points of debate for many years have once again been brought to the fore with the arrest of Juilan Assange the 40 year old spokesperson and Editor-In-chief of Wikileaks.

Very few people are aware of the fact that Mr.Assange started the website in 2006 and has been awarded with the 2009 Amnesty International Media Award as well as the 2008 Economist Freedom of Expression Award. However, all of his great work in bringing important facts and truths out in the open for the benefit of society has been undone after he messed with the US and published the U.S. diplomatic cables. Whether there is any truth to his alleged sexual offences in Sweden is still unknown , but the question is that even if there is any truth then why has it been brought to light only now after many years.

Should Private Businesses accept dictated terms by Governments?

The New York Times reports here, that hackers and "cyberanarchists" around the world have unleashed attacks on the websites of Mastercard, Visa, Amazon and Paypal who shut down their services for use by Wikileaks supposedly under influence from the US Government.

Just how selfish or two-faced these corporations is showcased by this tweet illustrating how Amazon cut off the use of its web hosting platform (Amazon Web Services) for wikileaks but is still selling the docs for its Kindle product.

This raises the important question of whether private corporates should allow the government to dictate terms to them fearing the consequences of not obeying the government.

Should Information Be Shared or Censored? Does Freedom of expression have any limits associated with it ?

What exactly does one mean by freedom of expression and freedom of speech? Is it alright to publish conversations and secrets that one is not a part of and that are obtained through questionable means? These are some of the complex terrains that the Wikileaks controversy raises.

The Knowledge @ Wharton network in its analysis of the Wikileaks issue considers it to have serious implications for the broader aspects of law and public policy. "The most obvious lesson [of the WikiLeaks case] is that it represents the first really sustained confrontation between the established order and the culture of the internet. There have been skirmishes before, but this is the real thing.", as noted by the article The WikiLeaks Battle: Should Information Be Shared or Censored?

The article goes on to state that the very inception, growth and success of Wikileaks is a result of the extremely protective ecosystem that has caused governments to hold up important information useful to society in a web of different kinds of classification and a weak press that basically "acts like a stenographer" rather than expressing free thought.

Whatever the fate of Mr. Juilan Assange it is certain that Wikileaks and the various questions that it has raised is not going to die anytime soon, specially within the Press and Media which has actually tapped the power of the press to make itself known.

What are your thoughts on these questions? Do share it with us.

(The Author is an MBA from AGSM,UNSW,Sydney and Kellogg School Of Management, USA. He is also the Editor of DelhiPlanet You can follow him on Twitter @kirtidhingra)