Or maybe it's just me; an obscure blogging service had their server seized here in the U.S., in what is reported to be a case against, you guessed it, an Islamic terrorist mess of some sort or another. Ripples through the blogosphere warn of the Dire Horrors Of Government Crackdown On Blogs.
...More like the Dire Lag Of Intellectual Property Laws, if you ask me. If J. Random Badguy's blog of badness and evil just happens to be on the same server as, say, my blog of sweetness and light, and the machine is named in a warrant and gets grabbed The Law, my innocent natterings go away, too...unless I saved a backup and can haul it over to another host. And yes, that sucks, and yes, that means Your Stuff gets taken.
If it really matters, make a backup. At least be aware of what might happen. Good, bad, indifferent or Illuminati,* the gears are very large and individual bloggers are very small.
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* Weirdly enough, that's a word Blogger and Firefox both have in their spellcheckers. Helps to know your market, I guess.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/blogetery-al-qaeda/
ReplyDeleteIt looks like the Gov'mint had issues with a few sites and BurstNET decided to pull the plug on 70,000 blogs with the same underlying fully qualified domain name.
Then BurstNET seems to claim that the feds made them do it, and they also failed to respond to entirely reasonable customer service requests like "what the heck happened?" and "give me access to my backups!"
While BurstNET does indeed seem to be at fault, the event still argues against giving the Feds an internet "off switch" that they can use at any time without due process.
Speaking of considering hosting my own...
ReplyDeleteI host my blog at home. I pay out the nose for the fixed IP and business class service, but for me it's worth it (I'm also a developer, so I use my Interweb Tubes for biz).
ReplyDeleteFor all the wailing and gnashing of teeth, and even with my near universal distrust of anything .gov related, I still don't see this as an attack on free speech. Not one of those bloggers is barred from opening another blog and speaking their mind.
There's enough stupid all the way around from both Burstnet and Uncle Sam, but I attribute it to just that - stupidity, not malice.
Which is weirdly apt, sort of, in that, earlier today, a conversation started at work re: The advantages to the .gov providing everyone with basic intardt00bz services...
ReplyDelete