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Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
10/28/09
10/28/09
10/28/09
10/28/09
No, you don't say! Copyright issues too? OMG! #chinagooglecensorship
08/14/09
Would it be OK if I used this the next time I need to deliver the keynote speech at a rally for network neutrality in front of 10s of millions of people?
08/14/09
08/14/09
08/14/09
But, Mai Ding Ling IS my real name. Honest.
08/14/09
08/14/09
What is this world coming to!!?!
08/14/09
08/14/09
077 == Chinese knock off of James Bond.
08/14/09
07/27/09
07/27/09
07/27/09
07/27/09
Don't you mean NOT taken hold yet?
07/27/09
07/27/09
07/27/09
07/27/09
One of At&T's tech geeks (whose probably a 4chan user), got on the phone with At&T HQ and said, "Umm, boss - do you honestly realize who your fucking with? This is only going to end badly for us. Very badly."
He then sent everyone at At&T HQ an email with all of the 4Chan Scientology/potter/etc You Tube prank videos and AT&T realized that they were messing with villians of the highest order - 12 year old hentei addicts who are constantly hopped up on Redbull and Doritos*. Rather than mess with this "Den of Vipers" (thank you Gawker), AT&T did what any coward would do and issued this bs sack-of-shit public statement hoping to avoid the inevitable backlash from Legion.
If you doubt that it went down exactly like this ask yourself: Why the FUCK would Ma Bell issue a pr statement apologizing for blocking a website like 4Chan unless they were positively absolutely scared shitless of their members?
Seriously. Why go out of your way to apologize to any group unless you feared backlash from said group?
Fer Chrissake - how many years did it take US to formally apologize for slavery?
Edit: In no way, shape, or form am I disparaging 12 year olds, doritos, hentei, or redbull. please don't wreck my life 4chan ...
07/27/09
haha oh wow
07/27/09
It's summer. All the little bastards are out of school and idle hands are the devil's play things.
How long do you think they could keep up a ddos or 12? 1 week? 2 weeks? Until school starts back up?
AT&T (in the best of all possible worlds) could be looking at a really shitty August. So yeah - as a CEO I would be scared shitless of a bunch of little bastards (i mean that affectionately) with plenty of free time, nothing better to do, and a serious case of self-rightousness(sic)/purpose.
All you would have to do is attack AT&T for a week or two.
People can't log on to pay bills. People can't log on to update/change account info. People can't do shit. So they all start calling customer service which is, of course, backed up to high hell because no one can use their online services. They probably end up waiving all the "talk to a rep to pay bill $5 fees" and lose all that revenue.
Not to mention the bad publicity ...
At least thats how I see it playing out.
07/27/09
07/27/09
Trust me, they don't give a fucking good goddamn about 4Chan.
07/27/09
I'm with you, if this were censorship this would be all kinds of fucked up of AT&T and if that were the case then may Anon have mercy on their souls.
But cmon. /b/ pulls off DDoS attacks all the time. I don't think it's that hard to believe that an ISP decided to head one off at the source before it got worse, and then were perfectly willing to open it back up later.
So I'm not surprised at this response, this is what I suspected to be the case. We're not China, no one goes around censoring sites at will, I don't know of a single ISP in America that does that. It's just way too easy for people to sound the censorship alarm and get everyone together to pull the kind of shit that got them (temporarily) blocked in the first place.
Where exactly are you getting this whole "AT&T tech geek /b/tard warning the company" story? It just sounds like horseshit Anon come up with and try to spread.
07/27/09
You don't worry about offending peoples or groups who can't do cause you "harm".
Case in point - U.S. doesn't formally apologize for slavery until black person becomes president. Coincidence? Fuck no.
You don't care about X group or organization until X group/organization can impact your life in a meaningful way (be it politically, socially, or economically).
Secondly, this is the same group of "people" (children if you prefer) that were all over the news for a few weeks because they had issues with Scientology (rightfully so).
You can't argue with the fact that however disorganized, chaotic, and possibly mentally challenged the users of 4chan may be - they're pretty good at getting attention.
Yes, you're right, there is a case that it is solely about censorship - but I would argue that groups and organizations are censored or shunned all the time and no one really notices EXCEPT when someone makes a giant fucking fuss about it.
And 4chan members are precisely the sort of people to make a mountain out of a molehill.
Which is the basis for my previous speculation - and IT IS/WAS pure speculation.
07/27/09
Respondin 2 ur outrage.
07/27/09
07/27/09
From the reports I had seen it sounds like the block was not put in place to censor, but to counter the attack. We won’t hear an official word until PR is able to dig through the information provided to them by their netops crew.
Had a couple other carriers not joined in on the block I could see it being a censorship issue, but honestly as far as the net in the US is concerned Cogent is just as big of a player on the hosting side as ATT is so I’m not sure why all of the reports only mention ATT.
For people who don’t know, Cogent is the backbone provider for most of the high volume porn sites and the like. They provide higher latency bandwidth on the cheap (higher when compared to companies like Level 3 anyways).
07/27/09
Edit:
*Puts on my level 3 reading comprehension cap*
Ah, the difference a single word can make "appeared"
07/27/09
I actually did it twice in two different posted and edited them both. Both posts show as edited, but the changes are missing. hrmf Maybe I did need to go down for the extra cup of coffee.