4chan Blocked by AT&T

I just noticed from chatter elsewhere that AT&T is blocking the infamous image board web site 4chan.

I have DSL with AT&T and have confirmed that they are, in fact, blocking the site entirely.

While I'm absolutely no fan of 4chan at all (it's basically a place where hateful people congregate to plan harassment campaigns and post obscene and sometimes illegal material), this concerns me somewhat because it is a form of censorship and a departure from the principles of net neutrality.

If ISPs are going to start doing this sort of thing, even to unsavory (but still technically legal) web sites, this sets a precedent for widespread Internet censorship.

I'm not trying to sound like an alarmist but this is a development worth monitoring.

Bleh, 4chan. Part of me thinks "who the hell cares" but the other part says "oh crap, they're actually censoring the internet now".

So, I looked around to try to corroborate this.

http://techcrunch.com/2009/07/26/att-blocks-4chan-this-is-going-to-get-ugly/

Apparently AT&T blocked 4chan because a suspected DDoS attack was coming from their servers.

That means 4chan was either hacked or they're mistaken. AFAIK, attacks are planned there but not launched from their servers (how would that work unless their servers were hijacked?)

No love lost, obviously.

And nothing of value was lost.

I do worry about censorship. Other countries do it and if your service provider is willing to do it, that kinda opens the floodgates.

Hey, as long as the government isn't taking site down, I'd say chill.