According to reports, Verio stated that the termination was due to violation of its acceptable use policy, but John Young, Cryptome's founder, says this time, Verio hasn't specified how exactly the site violates the rules, something the ISP had been more open and forgiving about in the past. Young says Verio had historically received requests from outside sources, including British Intelligence, asking him to remove documents from the site and Verio would simply pass them on to him and wait for him to right his wrongs.

Reports add that Verio may have simply decided that supporting Cryptome.org wasn't worth the legal burden. And yet others believe that Verio may have been pressured by some government agency because as much as Cryptome.org has been a valuable repository for people interested in open government, there are many people who don't like that much openness, says a fan of the site.

This incident points to a potentially worrisome trend that as control of the Internet gets more concentrated in the hands of big corporations, the concept of the Net as "the purest platform for free speech" is put into jeopardy.

Verio also recently launched its managed private server on the Linux platform, part of Verio's 360º Managed Servers suite of services.