(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Several weeks after free blog hosting service, Blogetery (www.blogetery.com), was shuttered by its hosting provider, BurstNET (www.burst.net), for hosting content allegedly posted by members of terrorist group al-Qaeda, the blog site is back online with a new host.
In July, it was reported that Blogetery was shut down in relation to a request from authorities and what BurstNET described as “terrorist material” posted to a free blog, including “bomb-making instructions and an al-Qaeda ‘hit list.’” BurstNET later clarified that it had been alerted to the content by an unspecified law enforcement agency, and shut Blogetery down because of terms of service and acceptable use policy violations.
“We received a letter for Voluntary Emergency Disclosure of Information Request (18 U.S.C 2702) from a law enforcement agency for the owner of blogetery.com,” BurstNET chief technology officer Joe Marr explained in an email interview with the WHIR. “The letter included information on why a request was being made. Upon review of this request, subsequent review of the owner’s account history, and review of the specific content we chose to terminate his service based on multiple violations of our terms of service and acceptable use policy.”
According to CNET, the Toronto-based operator of Blogetery, Alexander Yusupov, was able to regain access to what appears to be all his customers’ data, which he used to relaunch Blogetery with another Web host. While BurstNET does not typically return data to customers shut down for TOS violations, it made an exception for Blogetery. Yusupov told CNET that since the site went back online on August 10, the service is faster, has less spam blogs and he is now backing up his data – which hadn’t been the case before.
