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AT&T is blocking 4Chan

Pika

Pika

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Oct 5, 2008
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Hrududu

Hrududu

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Jul 25, 2008
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oregon2

macrumors regular
Jul 7, 2009
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Pika said:
edit: or are is there already 'cyber unrest', so to speak?
Click to expand...

yes. 4chan is not a site to mess around with, and AT&T is sure to feel it. i was curious so i went and checked the /b/ board and i saw many posts about dealing with att. some suggestions included

-calling local and national newstations
-ddos attacks against att
-harassing the ceo of att
-harassing apple about getting out of the iphone contract with att
-contacting politicians (lol)
 
J

J the Ninja

macrumors 68000
Jul 14, 2008
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I've already contacted politicians (well, one. But it was a senator from my state on the Senate net/telecom committee.)

AT&T was really NOT smart to do this. They're going to get a massive PR &%*storm in the coming few days. Hopefully, net neutrality can gain a bit of traction from this one.

(I came in this board to start this thread, but it seems I was beaten to it)
 
Y

yg17

macrumors Pentium
Aug 1, 2004
15,027
3,002
St. Louis, MO
AT&T blocked 4chan because the site was a constant target of DDoS attacks and AT&T didn't want to carry all of that traffic, sounds reasonable to me.

I wish 4chan would disappear off the face of the net, they're the most useless bunch of morons to ever walk this planet.
 
benthewraith

benthewraith

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May 27, 2006
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Pika said:
AT&T always seems to be at the forefront of censorship. Haven't seen any threads on this so far, so...

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

I'm going to make the wild presumption that much entertainment will ensue. Any predictions as to what may or may not happen out of this?

edit: or are is there already 'cyber unrest', so to speak?
Click to expand...

Can't you bypass this by a proxy or change DNS settings?
 
Y

yg17

macrumors Pentium
Aug 1, 2004
15,027
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St. Louis, MO
iBlue said:
Sure but that's hardly the point. AT&T blocking them makes a statement which is likely going to be a crapstorm of problems for them. I can understand why they did it but I don't think it was a good idea.
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The block's already been lifted according to that article and it was only for a few hours during the attack, it's not going to bring a crapstorm of problems. What are the 4chan pissants going to do, rickroll the CEO of AT&T?
 
benthewraith

benthewraith

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May 27, 2006
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yg17 said:
The block's already been lifted according to that article and it was only for a few hours during the attack, it's not going to bring a crapstorm of problems. What are the 4chan pissants going to do, rickroll the CEO of AT&T?
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Or DDoS his home?
Hack into his email.
Publish very personal information, such as SSN# and home address.
 
belvdr

belvdr

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Aug 15, 2005
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If there was a DDOS attack originating from their systems, I would certainly hope my provider would block access. There's no reason to let that traffic onto AT&T's network and wreak havoc.
 
iBlue

iBlue

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Mar 17, 2005
19,180
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London, England
yg17 said:
The block's already been lifted according to that article and it was only for a few hours during the attack, it's not going to bring a crapstorm of problems. What are the 4chan pissants going to do, rickroll the CEO of AT&T?
Click to expand...

Ah I see.

I don't know what they'd do but when 4chan decide to cause internet problems, they do a pretty decent job of it. In addition, AT&T risk pissing off their own customers and they would have been risking a PR drama with this:

"Under the FCC’s Comcast/BitTorrent ruling, Internet Service Providers may only slow or cap connection speeds. They are not allowed to block any service or protocol on the internet. Here, 4chan as a web site appears to fall under an internet service, but it is also conforming to standard web page protocols. It appears AT&T does not have the legal right to block 4chan, only to cap customers who are “abusing” their access to the internet."


I really don't give a crap either way, it doesn't affect me, I just thought if AT&T did decide to block 4chan that it probably wasn't that great of an idea.
 
belvdr

belvdr

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Aug 15, 2005
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iBlue said:
Ah I see.

I don't know what they'd do but when 4chan decide to cause internet problems, they do a pretty decent job of it. In addition, AT&T risk pissing off their own customers and they would have been risking a PR drama with this:

"Under the FCC’s Comcast/BitTorrent ruling, Internet Service Providers may only slow or cap connection speeds. They are not allowed to block any service or protocol on the internet. Here, 4chan as a web site appears to fall under an internet service, but it is also conforming to standard web page protocols. It appears AT&T does not have the legal right to block 4chan, only to cap customers who are “abusing” their access to the internet."


I really don't give a crap either way, it doesn't affect me, I just thought if AT&T did decide to block 4chan that it probably wasn't that great of an idea.
Click to expand...

From the sound of things, I don't believe 4chan sits on AT&T's network. So, AT&T can block them if they so wish. They are just not allowing their customers to get to 4chan; they are not disallowing everyone.

Even if 4chan is an AT&T customer, if a DDOS attack stems from them, I don't see any fault with shutting it down to prevent further disruptions for everyone else. It's no longer just a bandwidth issue; it's a security issue on top of that.
 
iBlue

iBlue

macrumors Core
Mar 17, 2005
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belvdr said:
From the sound of things, I don't believe 4chan sits on AT&T's network. So, AT&T can block them if they so wish. They are just not allowing their customers to get to 4chan; they are not disallowing everyone.

Even if 4chan is an AT&T customer, if a DDOS attack stems from them, I don't see any fault with shutting it down to prevent further disruptions for everyone else. It's no longer just a bandwidth issue; it's a security issue on top of that.
Click to expand...

That's not how I read it. I took it to mean AT&T was not legally allowed to censor which websites their customers go to.

Honestly though, I don't care. I'm not fighting for either side. I was merely saying that if AT&T or any other ISP decided to block 4chan or any other notoriously undesirable website that it may not be a good idea. Sounds like it was all blown out of proportion though anyway.
 
belvdr

belvdr

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iBlue said:
That's not how I read it. I took it to mean AT&T was not legally allowed to censor which websites their customers go to.
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Sorry we're on different wavelengths. :) It wasn't blocked because AT&T just didn't want their customers going there. One of the article's states there were ACK scans originating from 4chan, thus the block and only a certain IP from what I'm gathering. They didn't block the whole domain. Nowhere do I read that AT&T has confirmed this, but that's the view I was taking above.

I don't care either. I have no use for 4chan personally.
 
Y

yg17

macrumors Pentium
Aug 1, 2004
15,027
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St. Louis, MO
iBlue said:
That's not how I read it. I took it to mean AT&T was not legally allowed to censor which websites their customers go to.

Honestly though, I don't care. I'm not fighting for either side. I was merely saying that if AT&T or any other ISP decided to block 4chan or any other notoriously undesirable website that it may not be a good idea. Sounds like it was all blown out of proportion though anyway.
Click to expand...

AT&T isn't censoring anything though, there was an attack on 4chan which brought traffic across AT&T's network, and they temporarily blocked access to investigate and stop the attack. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
 
Consultant

Consultant

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Jun 27, 2007
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Eidorian

Eidorian

macrumors Penryn
Mar 23, 2005
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It was img at first but now it seems I can't connect to anything beyond the front page now.

To be honest nothing of value was lost on img. /b/ and /r9k/? :rolleyes:
 
TuffLuffJimmy

TuffLuffJimmy

macrumors G3
Apr 6, 2007
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iBlue said:
I really don't give a crap either way, it doesn't affect me, I just thought if AT&T did decide to block 4chan that it probably wasn't that great of an idea.
Click to expand...

First they came for the pedophiles, but I did not speak up for I was not a pedophile.


In all seriousness I think it's pretty odd that AT&T would block 4chan, first because it's censoring the net, second because if anyone is going to do anything about it it's 4chan.
 
belvdr

belvdr

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Aug 15, 2005
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TuffLuffJimmy said:
First they came for the pedophiles, but I did not speak up for I was not a pedophile.


In all seriousness I think it's pretty odd that AT&T would block 4chan, first because it's censoring the net, second because if anyone is going to do anything about it it's 4chan.
Click to expand...

They weren't censoring though. They filtered only one server because an attack was originating from it. They didn't filter the entire domain.

Evidently 4chan wasn't able to do much and was having issues keeping their own stuff running because of the attack. From what I understand, they even went down due to it.
 
iBlue

iBlue

macrumors Core
Mar 17, 2005
19,180
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London, England
TuffLuffJimmy said:
First they came for the pedophiles, but I did not speak up for I was not a pedophile.


In all seriousness I think it's pretty odd that AT&T would block 4chan, first because it's censoring the net, second because if anyone is going to do anything about it it's 4chan.
Click to expand...

Precisely my line of thinking.

(for anyone wanting a reference)

As it turns out it wasn't censoring in quite the way I thought:
yg17 said:
AT&T isn't censoring anything though, there was an attack on 4chan which brought traffic across AT&T's network, and they temporarily blocked access to investigate and stop the attack. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
Click to expand...
 
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