Blogetery Shutdown: FBI, Al Qaeda, and a Hapless Employee

"Bomb-making tips, hit list behind Blogetery closure"
CNET (July 19, 2010)

"More details are surfacing about why Blogetery.com, a blogging platform that claimed to service more than 70,000 blogs, was mysteriously booted from the Internet by its Web-hosting company.

"The site was shut down after FBI agents informed executives of Burst.net, Blogetery's Web host, late on July 9 that links to al-Qaeda materials were found on Blogetery's servers, Joe Marr, chief technology officer for Burst.net, told CNET. Sources close to the investigation say that included in those materials were the names of American citizens targeted for assassination by al-Qaeda. Messages from Osama bin Laden and other leaders of the terrorist organization, as well as bomb-making tips, were also allegedly found on the server.

"But Marr said a Burst.net employee erred in telling Blogetery's operator and members of the media that the FBI had ordered it to terminate Blogetery's service. He said Burst.net did that on its own...."

I've enjoyed watching the occasional X-Files, and movies with titles like 'Aliens Stole My Uncle's Brain,' but on the whole I take conspiracy theories with a grain of salt. Several grains, actually.

I read about the Blogetery shutdown last Friday. Those 73,000 blogs had gone offline earlier this month, setting off some - imaginative - speculation.

The CNET article gives a pretty good explanation, I think, of what happened. Essentially, someone got nervous, emulated C3PO in the original Star Wars movie, and gave the order to shut down all the blogs on Blogetery: not just the one with with Al Qaeda's information on it.

I'm inclined to believe that explanation: people can do silly things, when we get excited.

Related posts:

• "Boletery Shutdown, WordPress, Al Qaeda, the FBI, and C3PO"
  Another War-on-Terror Blog (July 19, 2010)
• "73,000 WordPress Blogs Go Silent: Blogetery Complies With Federal Demand"
  (July 16, 2010)