U.S. asks blog sites to shut down

2010-08-05

Posted by Bruecke at 13:00

U.S. asks blog sites to shut down

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/24/BUF31EGQRC.DTL

Double shutdown: Under mysterious circumstances and with unusual abruptness, two websites used to create blogs and message boards were taken down at the behest of U.S. investigators earlier this month, baffling users and commentators on the Web alike.

Both Blogetery.com, which said it hosted around 70,000 blogs, and online forum site IPBFree.com were taken offline in early July.

It is not entirely clear why the two sites were removed, but at least in Blogetery's case, the shutdown seems to involve a federal investigation on al Qaeda online communications.

The initial cryptic responses to users' questions about what happened added to the confusion. Both IPBFree administrators and Burst.net, Blogetery's Web host, deeply apologized for the incident but said they were barred by law to provide any specific information.

But Burst.net later told PC World that they had voluntarily decided to take down Blogetery after investigators approached them.

It is still unclear who hosted the IPBFree site, why it was taken down or if the action was related to the Blogetery case.