Story Topics: 4chan - Verizon Communications

ReadWriteWeb — According to 4chan's Twitter account and status update blog, they have been "explicitly blocked" by the Verizon Network. If you're unfamiliar with 4chan and why an ISP/wireless company would block it, read more about it on Wikipedia . The high-traffic image board of mostly anonymous users was created by Christopher Poole in 2003 and has been the subject of a fair amount of negative media and legal attention over the past 7 years. But why would Verizon choose to block the site now? Does this put Verizon on par with foreign ISPs that block torrent sites and social networks? Or is there more to the story? Sponsor Poole wrote this afternoon, "Over the past 72 hours, we've been receiving reports from Verizon Wireless customers having difficulty accessing the image boards. After investigating, we found that Verizon is dropping traffic... only on port 80 (HTTP). No other subdomain/IP/port is affected, which leads us to believe this block is intentional." However, a couple hours ...More ago, Poole posted, "After an hour and a half on the phone, we've received confirmation from Verizon's Network Repair Bureau (NRB) that we are 'explicitly blocked.'" In the past , we've held a generally negative view of ISP censorship and traffic-shaping , regardless of site content. It'll be interesting to see how this battle shapes up, as Poole is calling for 4chan users to file complaints with Verizon's Network Repair Bureau. We are contacting Verizon to figure out specifically why the site is being blocked and will update this post as more information becomes available. Discuss ...Less