haha, in their fake digg article, I love the canned, 'RIP, you'll be missed' comments. This is superficial on so many levels, I don't know where to begin.
Ok, so I understand that AT&T blocking 4chan could qualify as an acceptable topic for this site, but how is a forum dedicated to pranks against AT&T even remotely Hacker News?
AT&T censoring a website was fundamentally wrong. It violates your (as in Americans) constitutional rights to free speech. That is something that is interesting to read and discuss for the HN community.
Sending pizza's to the operational centres of AT&T (which was one of the few topics currently on the site when I first looked) is not, sorry. It's an immature response to a serious problem.
This is a common misunderstanding -- probably committed more often by Americans than non-, though, so don't feel too badly. The fact of the matter is that private corporations (and that includes publicly traded such; ahh, the vagaries of English) are pretty much free to do whatever they want with the infrastructure they own, without running afoul of the Constitutional protections regarding free speech.
That's not to say they won't suffer some well-deserved ire if they "censor" something, but the actual First Amendment reads, "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech..." (The elided bit in the middle of the quote is the part about religion, often called the Establishment Clause.) They're under no legal or other obligation to "not censor"; the Congress is.
That doesn't mean AT&T haven't run afoul of any of the other Safe Harbor provisions they're subject to under US law, but that's not remotely about freedom of speech. The gist there, AIUI, is that if you block one kind of content, there's an implication that you have the ability to block arbitrary kinds of content, and so you're suddenly obligated to. (Someone who knows how the various Safe Harbor provisions is encouraged to correct any misstatements in the preceding.)
EDIT: As potatolicious points out above, this isn't as black and white as all that; when government and industry climb into bed together, they tend to get their obligations and responsibilities all over one another.
people always bring up the free speech issue, here is a newsflash...all those rights you think you have, only apply to the government. Corporations are more or less free to do whatever.
Not that black and white - note that telecommunications is often a government-granted (and mandated) monopoly. Some municipalities sign exclusivity deals with certain telecom providers, and certainly spectrum limitations and whatnot as granted by the government reinforces this.
Private companies engaging in censorship runs afoul of the law if the government has a hand in them being there.
yeah, broken link and the original appears to be gone. Too bad, it was a fairly level headed "calm down and let's see what's really going on" kind of post. Next best post is this:
Okay, let's stop and be rational here. And if your stupid ass is too lazy to read this, fuck off and go back to Habbo.
Here is what we know:
1) AT&T customers around the nation cannot access img.4chan.org;
2) AT&T claims that there is a security issue (no further details available to end-users) regarding img.4chan.org that they have contacted Moot about; and
3) Moot is aware of the problem (I emailed him, and I'm sure others have as well).
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but that's all we know.
I am significantly older than most of you, and I have a law degree. I have significant public relations and marketing experience, and I have the wisdom to see that we should wait before jumping the gun here. Moot is probably shitting bricks right now with the amount of emails he's receiving.
This is essentially a he-said/she-said issue now, and AT&T may be full of shit about the "security issue." But before the hordes of 14-year old boys and their Skype accounts start sending massive amounts of pizzas to AT&T offices, let's wait and see what happens. I suggest we give AT&T the benefit of the doubt and wait to see if Moot responds (assuming there is a legitimate issue between AT&T and 4chan) and if the matter can be resolved that way.
If, after a few days, it is revealed that AT&T is truly "censoring" parts of its customer's Internet experience, then I suggest we work through the media. There are legitimate news outlets that would be interested in hearing about censorship, because the media has long been at odds with any sort of regulation of information.
However, as a personal favor, please stop with the First Amendment shit. You don't know what you're talking about, you sound like idiots, and anyone that knows a bit about the First Amendment is going to laugh when they read your posts... meaning our "cause" loses credibility. And let's face it, despite that censorship issues have the potential to reach much further than 4chan, when the public finds out what /b/ is all about, we're not going to be the media darlings we need to be.
So for the time being, plan. But plan wisely. Don't threaten. Don't physically damage equipment. DDOSs against a Tier1 ISP are about as useful as screen doors on a submarine. Do these things at your own peril, but realize for each retarded action you take in the name of a resistance, every time it fails or gets negative press, you are fucking things up for the rest of us.
Indeed. San Francisco is reporting they're unblocked already.
Also, it appears that it was not someone doing something stupid... the most official-looking explanation I've found is here: http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/msg19609.html
Nutshell: the affected subdomains were getting DDoS'd, and the colo housing the relevant 4chan servers couldn't take it, so AT&T did the colo a favor and started dropping traffic upstream.
