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TorrentFreak is reporting that a company, Blogetery, that hosted about 73,000 blogs, has been shut down by US authorities. Details are, admittedly, sketchy at this point, but the entire site has been taken down, and the company’s ISP claims that they had to terminate the account immediately due to the “request of law enforcement officials, due to material hosted on the server.” The ISP also claimed:
“this was not a typical case, in which suspension and notification would be the norm. This was a critical matter brought to our attention by law enforcement officials. We had to immediately remove the server.”That seems odd. If there was problematic content from some users, why not just take down that content or suspend those users. Taking down all 73,000 blogs seems… excessive. TorrentFreak speculates that this may be a part of the recent Homeland Security efforts to shut down file sharing site, and points to some evidence that there were at least a few Blogetery blogs that shared copyrighted works. However, no one’s talking, and the ISP seems spooked, saying that it’s “serious”:
Seems like overkill to me.
Found by ECA.
I am getting sleepy enough not to be able to count to five, but right now, I can’t even “imagine” a circumstance that would justify this action.
“A captured terrorist says that the code to launch the nuclear bomb is going to posted thru Blogerty ISP in the next 4 days.”
Would THAT do it? I’ve seen 158 tv shows with psycho’s communicating to one another thru want ads. STOP THE PRESSES!!!!
Would be nice to see a follow up?
Didn’t the same thing just happen in China?
GagetSteria:
“BurstNet is claiming they’re sworn to secrecy and that the data from the downed sites cannot be retrieved.”
Man, 73,00 really pissed off users.
The only three things that come to mind are illegaldown loads violating copyright, spam, and kiddy porn.
Since the kiddy porn would almost certainly be trying to keep a low profile and most likely would only have a single site that seems much less likely than being a major spam source. However if they think the site hosting company is a party to it they all are going to get nailed.
We all should know that having somebody copy music and movies is a national security issue that Joe Biden has taken the time to personally address and seemed to think has an importance on a par with Afghanistan so that might be it.
It could also be that somebody cracked the server’s security and they need the entire thing to try and figure out what is going on however the likely uses are still the same.
Some of the blogs contained secret messages from Osama bin Laden, maybe?
DHS – protecting the homeland, one torrent at a time.
Out of 73,000 I would think that the majority were legitimate blogs and the owners got shafted.
If you check the Internet Archive (www.archive.org), the host site (www.blogetery.com) has listings starting in March 2007, running thru August 2008, but then stopping, with nothing in 2009 or 2010.
I wonder if anything was removed from the Internet Archive as well?
Zero….
What else do you need to know?
Silence the opposition any way you can….
You bloggers are getting too uppity with your free speech and such….time to shut you guys up. Git your info from the tube like the other slaves.
That we can control.
Slew of a thousand tasers.
My guess is that someone had a blog that “threatened national security” meaning, someone posted something that the powers that be didn’t want the people to be aware of.
If there was enough people that viewed the blog or knew of it’s existence then taking down that single blog would not only look suspicious but serve to validate what was posted on that blog. So they had to take down the entire server to avoid that.
Other than that, I see very few other legit reasons for removing the entire server.
/wild speculation
The most likely explanation is that this is just another ridiculous government intrusion/overstep into places they don’t belong. Someone probably posted another Mohammad comic or something.
Could it be because a few/lot of the blogs had some iDosing music tracks on them?
Would that even mean that it fell under the jurisdiction of the ‘war on drugs’?
My BS meter is buzzing. Sounds like a case of someone in a position of authority said “shut down that ONE company” and there you go. That it had none, 10 or 73,000 blogs is immaterial.
Would you rather have the government combing through all sorts of information *before* taking any action? Or have huge teams of bureaucrats paid by taxpayers on hand to do it *before* taking any action? You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Sounds reasonable to me that someone with enough evidence may, in some cases and through appropriate legal means, have the power to say “shut it down” before any damage happens (or information leaks). Of course, we also need free press, checks and balances to make sure that power is not abused.
My speculation would be.. Sensitive national security information, and the whole server system was confiscated.
You can accuse the federal government of many things but subtlety isn’t one of them.
You’ve all disappointed me. No one blaming this on Bush.
16,
you just did.
..including this one? Please! Please! Please!
[Really? Then how would you kill time? — ed]
Names, Names. I want Names…
If you follow the link and read the posts, it is pretty clear the owner violated the Terms of Service of his provider.
Someone, the provider can’t say whom, had an issue, so the server was taken down.
No conspiracy, just a violation of the law that was handled. The server was removed as evidence.
I think that it is unlikely that a dangerous blog could trigger anything that a bunch of phone calls couldn’t do. There is more than one way to communicate!!
#21
of 73000 BLOGS…?
BLOGS.
NOT storage locations…BLOGS.
OR did someone setup a COVER to HIDE what was being done.
Someone probably posted how you could make a bomb out of Boraxo, Comet, the red ink from the hearts & diamonds of a certain brand of playing cards and the white bits from candy corn packed in a 20-ounce plastic Mr. Pibb bottle.
Or maybe how you could interfere in normal political discourse and cause untold chaos by just making a bunch of sh*t up and endlessly repeating it…
Does anyone know where to find a listing of the blog names er’ info they “specialized” in?
Maybe someone had the collage records of Barry we’ve been waiting for……………………. ……………………………………………………………………………
Or maybe the server itself was hacked and being used as a info highway?
Either way, letting them get away with “NO EXPLANATION” is something we better not do. No matter what side of the realm you’re on, we should all be screaming foul and demanding answers. As this blog, and the SPLC and ACLU could be on the next one, or maybe even code pink could be ripped down?
By the way, George did have everything to do with this, he had to have after all, since, according to our historic president, George is still in charge of all his mess. And if he isn’t then isn’t it time to find out who is, and if no one, maybe we should elect a president. Alright, I’m done…..
My guess would be that the content of the blogs themselves had nothing at all to do with it. What classified material has had the government most up in arms the last few months? The documents supposedly in Wikileaks’ possession. No proof of that possession exists, to my knowledge. What if the information had actually been cached on, oh, some random server somewhere, lost among the 1’s and 0’s of 73,000 essentially harmless blogs? Purely wild speculation, of course.
“Sensitive national security information, and the whole server system was confiscated.”
That would be my guess, too.
Law Enforcement?
I wonder what law they are enforcing?
My guess is it actually had to do with money
Of some sort…
Maybe some gov’t misinformation site was among the 73,000. When they resurface they’ll have instant cred: “DHS closed us down!” It’s BS-o-meter of 100%, the question is wherein lies the excrement.
How the government saves the for profit media (press). Perhaps by killing much of its “free” or less costly competition. Especially if these competing sources of news and opinion, aren’t financially allied to either political party. And might threaten the upcoming election results, in some way. Nice timing, don’t you think?