Shut Indian blogs collateral damage
By Sameer

Only July 17, Techgoss had reported on the sudden shutdown of WordPress blogging platform Blogetery.com which was particularly popular in India.  Blogetery hosted more than 73,000 blogs of which many were set up by Indians. According to net traffic monitoring firm Alexa, Blogetery drew as much as 32 percent of its global traffic from India followed by United States and Germany

On July 9, 2010, Blogetery received an email from its hosting service BurstNET which read: “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”.

Within a few minutes,  Blogetery was offline.

No one was sure why hosting company BurstNET Technologies had shut down Blogetery without even giving them 24 hours to move the blogs to other computers.  All kinds of theories were doing the internet -  Blogetery was guilty of large scale copyright violations,  child porn and even that it was being used to store information leaked by whistleblowers.

On July, 19, 2010, the hosting company BurstNET, which was being criticized for not explaining why it shutdown an entire blogging community, made the following public statement

“
BurstNET Technologies, the largest web hosting and co-location provider in the Northeast Pennsylvania (USA) region, has been the subject of recent news headlines regarding the termination of service to popular website Blogetery.com.

BurstNET is releasing the following information, in order to set the record straight regarding the matter:

On the evening of July 9, 2010, BurstNET received a notice of a critical nature from law enforcement officials, and was asked to provide information regarding ownership of the server hosting Blogetery.com. It was revealed that a link to terrorist material, including bomb-making instructions and an al-Qaeda “hit list", had been posted to the site. Upon review, BurstNET determined that the posted material, in addition to potentially inciting dangerous activities, specifically violated the BurstNET Acceptable Use Policy. This policy strictly prohibits the posting of “terrorist propaganda, racist material, or bomb/weapon instructions". Due to this violation and the fact that the site had a history of previous abuse, BurstNET elected to immediately disable the system.
“

While BurstNET did not reveal the name of the law enforcement agency,  it is the FBI.

While every internet company has the right to shutdown any system being used by terrorists,  perhaps they should now hand over all the blogs which had nothing to do with criminal activity to their rightful owners.  Why should innocent Indian blogs be collateral damage in a terror investigation?

To make matters worse,  Blogetery did not have its own backups.

(Techgoss had published the following on July 17, 2010)

Hundreds of Indian blogs disappear
By Sameer

Free WordPress blogging platform Blogetery.com was particularly popular in India.  Blogetery hosted more than 73,000 blogs of which many were set up by Indians. According to international internet traffic monitoring firm Alexa, Blogetery has a global rank of 7,620.  It drew as much as 32 percent of its global traffic from India followed by United States, Germany and Pakistan.

Alexa describes Blogetery as “a site particularly popular among users in the city of Ahmadabad (where it is ranked 580). The site's visitors view an average of 5.2 unique pages per day. While roughly 32% of the site's visitors are in India, where it is ranked at 1,334, it is also popular in the Philippines, where it is ranked 832. “

Now, the blogging group Blogetery has disappeared after legal action initiated in the USA.  It was not even given 24 hours to move the blogs on to a different computer.  The US judiciary served a legal notice and the hosting service shut it down without returning it to its rightful owners. And thousands of ordinary blogs have become collateral damage.

According to Torrentfreak “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.”

On July 12, 2010, Blogetery received the following email from its hosting service 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
“

What is unfair is that many Indians on Blogetery had set up blogs with the only intention of communicating with friends and the outside world. These Indians blogs were not involved in any copyright violations.  But because of one legal order in USA, every Indian has lost his/her blog.

Only if bloggers and mainstream journalists bring this unfair loss of many legally run blogs on Blogetery to the public attention will the hosting service relent and restore the Indian blogs which were not involved in copyright infringement.  Why should innocents suffer because of the actions of others on any blogging platform?

(Sha, many thanks for the story tip. Tipsters, Big thank you for all your tips. If you need to speak to us in confidence or write for us on a long term basis, email us at techgoss[at]hotmail.com. Or use the Anonymous Tip form at the top of our website. Anonymity guaranteed. Unfortunately, we cannot use any tips which are not backed up by enough facts)