Free blog host shut down by US Authorities

[TigerII]

http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-authorit...-blogs-100716/

Damn, the Americans took the whole thing down. Anyone here lose their blog?

[Kudryavka]

Wat Wordpress is kaput?

I hope I'm reading this wrong.

[RadiantBeam]

Damn, 73,000 in one sweep? That's a lot of blogs to get shut down in just one shot; I imagine many people will be raging about this.

[CuXe]

they were streaming video illegally or linking to those sources (hence the reason why major torrent sites went down)... that will always get you in DMCA hell, not to mention trouble with the FBI and whatnot....

[Vexx]

Except that the Wordpress owners were responding, legally, to DMCA take-down requests. Whole thing is pretty suspicious at the moment. More information needed.

At the moment, it looks like a "shoot everyone and let God sort them out" maneuver.

[grylsyjaeger]

Damn, there goes a lot of the translation communities unless they start again on a different service.

[Vexx]

Emotionally, this is rather like shutting down an entire town because there were some illegal activities in it. Sadly, not many of these bloggers probably have access to significant lawyer firepower.

[Spectacular_Insanity]

Looks like bullshit to me. Not in that I don't think it's true, but in the fact that not all bloggers are putting copyrighted material up, so to do a widespread shutdown seems downright... fascist.

Sounds like censorship to me. I don't like it one bit. I can understand sites with copyrighted material, but an entire server? Bull-effing-shit.

[Vexx]

Yeah, I'm watching to see if the EFF has something to say here.

Here's a more informative article about what is known so far:

http://www.helium.com/items/1893892-...-us-government

[RadiantBeam]

Well, it's certainly one thing if the owner of the site was involved in something illegal, but to shut down all of the blogs hosted on it, too? Something about it definitely stinks. Not all of those people could have been accused of hosting illegal material.

[Nadeko_Sengoku]

*whew!* thank god my favorite blog isn't gone!

[Tsuyoshi]

Originally Posted by RadiantBeam

Well, it's certainly one thing if the owner of the site was involved in something illegal, but to shut down all of the blogs hosted on it, too? Something about it definitely stinks. Not all of those people could have been accused of hosting illegal material.

I think they were trying to make an example of someone. If you do this, you will be caught and your work will be trashed in an instant, and there's nothing you can say or do about it. Sounds very much like mafia tactics and who knows, it could be true. Still, it is strange that they take down an entire blog site and I expect half the blogs were legit (mind you, I haven't seen it or heard about it until today). Normally they just push to take down those blogs that aren't legit. Maybe because there were so many that it was a waste of time to just go through all of them?

[TigerII]

What is scary is the fact the American government is getting involved, not just industries.

However, I was watching the teli earlier and this came up. Apparently the Americans claimed that they were after child pornography and terrorist blogs mainly. They shut the entire thing down so they could clamp them all in one go. Still, guess that means translation days are numbered, If governments are getting involved.

Especially once ACTA is instated(In many nations). Sucks for those of us who like to watch/read unlicensed material.

[SeijiSensei]

God, this is as bad as reading Slashdot.

Start by reading this post and the linked discussion at webhostingtalk. Here are a few pieces of factual information to consider before this gets blown further out of proportion:

1) It wasn't Wordpress; it was one guy with a single leased server (and no backups). He offered free blog hosting and supposedly had 73,000 customers. His hosting service (BurstNet) was approached by Federal authorities and told to take the server offline. They did so. Whether Burst was presented with a court order or a Patriot Act request or something else is not known. What Burst did say was that some of the hosted materials violated the terms-of-service agreement which the blog hoster agreed to when leasing the server.

2) No one outside Burst and the authorities involved know what the server is alleged to contain, but this case looks nothing at all like mere copyright infringement. More likely the machine contained child pornography or perhaps even state secrets.

3) What probably happened was that the FBI confiscated the server for further forensic review. In cases like this, Burst is forbidden from informing the lessor why the server was taken offline to avoid impeding further investigation. I suspect the PATRIOT act was invoked, but others in the web hosting business said that child pornography would have resulted in the same type of gag order being imposed.

4) The 73,000 bloggers essentially represent "collateral damage" here. In a posting I made on Slashdot, I likened the situation to a magazine with lots of individual contributors. If one of the contributors posted child pornography in his or her article, you can be sure the magazine would be impounded regardless of whether the other articles were totally legitimate.

5) The guy running this service seems like a whiny nutcase. It apparently never crossed his mind that giving away free blogs to all comers might encourage someone to store illegal materials on the server he was renting. He figured he could sit at home and watch his AdSense revenues come rolling in without having to pay attention to what was actually on the machine. Yes, with 73K accounts that would be a difficult thing to do, but no one said running a blogging host was going to be easy. Whether the hoster has some type of editorial responsibility is an important policy issue that, as far as I know, has not been extensively considered or litigated (outside of the take-down provisions of the DMCA that govern potential copyright infringement).

There are lots of complicated issues here, but imagining that the stormtroopers have arrived and are trampling on free speech and small animals is an over-exaggeration. If you want to have a serious discussion about how blogging should be treated in terms of free-speech issues, let's have that discussion. There are already four pages over at Slashdot on how the US is now like China and how fascism is on the rise in America. Let's not replicate that conversation here.

[Kamui4356]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

God, this is as bad as reading Slashdot.

Start by reading this post and the linked discussion at webhostingtalk. Here are a few pieces of factual information to consider before this gets blown further out of proportion:

1) It wasn't Wordpress; it was one guy with a single leased server (and no backups). He offered free blog hosting and supposedly had 73,000 customers. His hosting service (BurstNet) was approached by Federal authorities and told to take the server offline. They did so. Whether Burst was presented with a court order or a Patriot Act request or something else is not known. What Burst did say was that some of the hosted materials violated the terms-of-service agreement which the blog hoster agreed to when leasing the server.

2) No one outside Burst and the authorities involved know what the server is alleged to contain, but this case looks nothing at all like mere copyright infringement. More likely the machine contained child pornography or perhaps even state secrets.

3) What probably happened was that the FBI confiscated the server for further forensic review. In cases like this, Burst is forbidden from informing the lessor why the server was taken offline to avoid impeding further investigation. I suspect the PATRIOT act was invoked, but others in the web hosting business said that child pornography would have resulted in the same type of gag order being imposed.

4) The 73,000 bloggers essentially represent "collateral damage" here. In a posting I made on Slashdot, I likened the situation to a magazine with lots of individual contributors. If one of the contributors posted child pornography in his or her article, you can be sure the magazine would be impounded regardless of whether the other articles were totally legitimate.

5) The guy running this service seems like a whiny nutcase. It apparently never crossed his mind that giving away free blogs to all comers might encourage someone to store illegal materials on the server he was renting. He figured he could sit at home and watch his AdSense revenues come rolling in without having to pay attention to what was actually on the machine. Yes, with 73K accounts that would be a difficult thing to do, but no one said running a blogging host was going to be easy. Whether the hoster has some type of editorial responsibility is an important policy issue that, as far as I know, has not been extensively considered or litigated (outside of the take-down provisions of the DMCA that govern potential copyright infringement).

There are lots of complicated issues here, but imagining that the stormtroopers have arrived and are trampling on free speech and small animals is an over-exaggeration. If you want to have a serious discussion about how blogging should be treated in terms of free-speech issues, let's have that discussion. There are already four pages over at Slashdot on how the US is now like China and how fascism is on the rise in America. Let's not replicate that conversation here.

Damn you and your facts getting in the way of everyone ranting about scanlators being taken down and evil fascist government censorship.

[Xion Valkyrie]

Originally Posted by Kamui4356

Damn you and your facts getting in the way of everyone ranting about scanlators being taken down and evil fascist government censorship.

Seriously, now we have to find something else to make conspiracy theories about.

[felix]

It would probably have been easier if everyone had just gone to http://wordpress.com/ and saw it was still up.

[Kudryavka]

Originally Posted by felix

It would probably have been easier if everyone had just gone to http://wordpress.com/ and saw it was still up.

I did that, lol.

[Sin of Memories]

Interesting.

[RadiantBeam]

Originally Posted by felix

It would probably have been easier if everyone had just gone to http://wordpress.com/ and saw it was still up.

But it's so much more fun to come up with conspiracy theories.