Techdirt.com

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.




  1. Mac Guy says:

    Followup: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/07/19/blogetery-owners-shut-down-bombs-al-qaeda/

    “FBI Warning of Al Qaeda Hit Lists, Bomb-Making Tips Led to Shutdown of Blogging Site

    A popular website that hosted more than 70,000 bloggers was shut down suddenly last week after the FBI informed its chief technology officer that the site contained hit lists, bomb-making documents and links to Al Qaeda materials, it was reported on Monday…”

  2. ECA says:

    http://techdirt.com/articles/20100719/11461510279.shtml

    MORE on the subject.
    ITS SAID..
    the FBI asked for nothing..
    Blogitary SHUT it all down.


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