The internet was awash with angry users recently arguing about censorship and neutrality as the hugely popular telecoms operator AT&T blocked 4chan temporarily.
The internet recently went crazy as the net meme generator and internet forum 4chan was reported to have been blocked by the telecoms giant AT&T.
The possibility of the mischievous web forum taking on the likes of AT&T, which has only recently managed to rebuild itself after it was split up back in the 80’s, led to news sites and technical block being inundated with chat and rumours. Accusations that AT&T was censoring sites or “firing one of the first shots in the net neutrality war” were made over the weekend following the blocking of the site.
In defining the term “net neutrality”, Lawrence Lessig, a digital legal expert said “Net neutrality means simply that all like internet content must be treated alike and move at the same speed over the network.”
The idea that the government should tell telecoms operators in the US how they should run their network was something that they were not happy about and said that any incentive to upgrade their network would be taken away if “net neutrality” actually happened.
The situation was, however, clarified by Christopher Poole, the owner of 4chan who said that the both the 4chan and AT&T website were being overwhelmed by huge amounts of data traffic that had apparently come from either an ACK attack or a SYN flood. In an attempt to reduce the impact this attack would have on customers certain website addresses from 4chan had been temporarily blocked.
Mr Poole commented on the recent block places on his website saying “In the end, this wasn’t a sinister act of censorship, but rather a bit of a mistake and a poorly executed, disproportionate response on AT&T’s part.”
Source – www.guardian.co.uk