Net lockdown: ‘We cannot give him his data nor can we provide any other details…something serious is afoot.”

A little taste of tyranny. How’s that ‘hope & change’ working out for you?

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

Written by enigmax on July 16, 2010 

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.

Now, according to the owner of a free WordPress platform which hosts more than 73,000 blogs, his network of sites has been completely shut down on the orders of the authorities.

Blogetery.com has been with host BurstNet for 7 months but on Friday July 9th the site disappeared. The following Monday the owner received an email from BurstNet:

Due to the history of abuse and on going abuse on this ‘bn.***********’ server.

We have opted to terminate this server, effective immediately. This termination applies to: bn.affiliateplex.com

Abuse Department
BurstNET Technologies, Inc

Further correspondence received the following response:

Bn.xx*********** was terminated by request of law enforcement officials, due to material hosted on the server.

We are limited as to the details we can provide to you, but note that this was a critical matter and the only available option to us was to immediately deactivate the server.

…and a later clarification:

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.

“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.”