U.S. Authorities Shut Down WordPress Host With 73,000 Blogs

U.S. Authorities Shut Down WordPress Host With 73,000 Blogs

torrentfreak.com

After the U.S. Government took action against several sites connected to movie streaming recently, nerves are jangling over the possibility that this is just the beginning of a wider crackdown. Now it appears that a free blogging platform has been taken down by its hosting provider on orders from the U.S. authorities on grounds of “a history of abuse”. More than 73,000 blogs are out of action as a result.

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
astroengineer.wordpress.com

Now I can understand the need to protect material with copyright and the like. But, to shutdown personal blogs like the former ATS member Astroengineer's blog on Word press to put it lightly sucks. I'm sure there are many other blogs on the site that have broken no laws either. I hope that AstroEngineer comes back to ATS and continues his path of awareness and for our reading pleasure disclosure.

There is no evidence that AstroEngineer's blog has been shut down btw. Apparently only some blogs have been affected.

torrentfreak.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 17-7-2010 by The Undertaker]

Not to mention that this is a slippery slope leading to full blown censorship. What if this happened to ATS? It's not like we don't discuss many controversial mind blowing subjects here that don't necessarily have a .gov endorsement. Is this the first salvo of the internet war?

I don't understand.

If all of the Wordpress blogs are shut down, why can I still see Astroengineers?

For that matter, why does their website still exist? I didn't see anything in the article about it being gotten rid of on a timed basis (although maybe I missed it)

wordpress.org...

They could have shut down any offending bloggers individually...Just look at what they did to Zundle years ago....
This is about free speech and truth wrecking the plan to turn the US and the free world into the Gulag GAZApellago

I don't believe this had anything to do with WordPress per se, but rather some site that was hosting a large number of WordPress blogs.

Originally posted by Danbones
They could have shut down any offending bloggers individually...Just look at what they did to Zundle years ago....
This is about free speech and truth wrecking the plan to turn the US and the free world into the Gulag GAZApellago

Okay, will you show me which blogs are gone?

My point is that, how do we know this is true...


[edit on 7/17/2010 by spacekc929]

o boy us is really making some enemyes.
better not upset the hackers,as the best ones mostly are on the rebel side.
and even with all the facebook/google datamining they cant really do much against these kinds of people.

reply to post by spacekc929


I just cruised wordpress.com and I don't find any mention of shutdown or irregularities either. Agreed, more information and verification is needed. I may have hoisted the distress flag a little early.

Originally posted by spacekc929

Originally posted by Danbones
They could have shut down any offending bloggers individually...Just look at what they did to Zundle years ago....
This is about free speech and truth wrecking the plan to turn the US and the free world into the Gulag GAZApellago

Okay, will you show me which blogs are gone?

My point is that, how do we know this is true...

And jtma508, I don't know what you mean. Sorry lol, I just am not good with computers sometimes. Why would another site be hosting Wordpress blogs?

Yeah, as posted by jtma508, they did not shut down all wordpress blogs(there are way more than 73,000) - a hosting company was shut down that hosted a lot of wordpress blogs. It does not appear individual bloggers were targeted. edit- no proof here, idk if its true, I am looking now, it sounds plausible to me though, especially if the host had thousands of spammy blogs, I know some people who own thousands of blogs because they make them automatically and used scraped content for their blog posts to get traffic and ad revenue...



[edit on 17-7-2010 by CREAM]

reply to post by spacekc929

Go look up what they did to Zundle.

from the link in the OP:

“We notified him [the Blogetery owner] when we terminated it [the server], and we refunded him his money to his account, because he has other servers with us If he wants the refund to his card, we can easily do that. However, it should be the least of his concerns,” A BurstNet representative later confirmed.

“Simply put: We cannot give him his data nor can we provide any other details. By stating this, most would recognize that something serious is afoot.”

Due to the fact that the authorities aren’t sharing information and BurstNet are sworn to secrecy, it is proving almost impossible to confirm the exact reason why Blogetery has been completely taken down. The owner does, however, admit to handling many copyright-related cease and desists in the past, albeit in a timely manner as the DMCA requires.

" ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO CONFIRM THE EXACT REASON" etc


[edit on 17-7-2010 by Danbones]

If tptb could stop spam then that would be useful. I'm not going to help a Nigerian and I don't need viagra. Get rid of this crap from the internet and they will get my applause.

Thought and opinion on the other hand is intellectual property with fundamental rights and protections. Interpretation and validity are left to the reader/listener to decide. You can't censor this one guys.

This is my opinion of course. If the .gov is going to draw a line and start blocking information then I might be persuaded to agree with this one.

[edit on 17-7-2010 by The Undertaker]

my wordpress blog is still up and running and doing fine...so are a lot of the wordpress blogs i follow...

I like this part ...

"Please note that 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."

Seems they only removed 1 server ... and you don't host 73k blogs one 1 server, so removing it just probably broke the whole site.

Something extremely shady/malicious/interesting was on that server.

Kaaboom, I just launched the worlds largest flare into the sky with the question; Have been denied access to your Wordpress Blog? If so then REPORT IN! If you've been booted then let's figure out why. Find the common denominator.

Wouldn't that be cool

Meh this is Bullcrud is what it is. This isn't really about copyrights and stealing. It's about controlling the internet and TPTB having an excuse to stop anyone or any sites that are spreading truth instead of their agenda and propaganda. Boo!

Discussion started by the blogetery owner ...

Webhostingtalk

Most likely explanation is the server was taken by warrant as evidence in a criminal investigation.

I am not sure what this means...but i think it may have to do with the OP...
please have a gander at this...i tried to go to the canadian comedy network site to watch back episodes of south park whilst doing houshold chores.
Low and behold i think this is not gonna be possible anymore but i need somebody whod know look and interpret it....
Comedy network is shut down!oh gawd help! IT SAYS VORBOTTEN!

www.thecomedynetwork.ca...

[edit on 17-7-2010 by stirling]

[edit on 17-7-2010 by stirling]