AT&T says 4chan.org block was DDoS-related

4chan founder says AT&T blocked site without contacting him

AT&T now says that it blocked portions of the popular 4chan.org bulletin board because it was being used as a base to launch DDoS attacks against one of its customers.

The company says that its actions were solely based on sound network management practices and have nothing to do with objecting to content posted on the img.4chan.org message boards. The block was first reported Sunday, when AT&T subscribers found they could not access certain portions of the 4chan.org bulletin boards. The block was lifted late last night after AT&T determined that "the denial-of-service threat no longer existed" and said it would continue to monitor the situation.

AT&T's decision to block portions of the site caused a flurry of angry commentary from users who speculated that the carrier was blocking the site due to its content. Adding to the confusion was the fact that 4chan.org founder Christopher "moot" Poole said that as of yesterday the company hadn't contacted him about its reasons for blocking parts of his site. Poole also advised 4chan users to "call or write customer support and corporate immediately" to complain about the blocking.

AT&T's statement on the blocking is notable because it tries to directly refute accusations that it blocks access to Web sites based on their content. Erling Løken Andersen, the CEO of the Norwegian social networking site Biip.no, got the ball rolling Sunday when he speculated that that AT&T was "firing one of the first shots in the net neutrality war" by blocking the site.

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AT&T now says that it blocked portions of the popular 4chan.org bulletin board because it was being used as a base to launch DDoS attacks against one of its customers.

The company says that its actions were solely based on sound network management practices and have nothing to do with objecting to content posted on the img.4chan.org message boards. The block was first reported Sunday, when AT&T subscribers found they could not access certain portions of the 4chan.org bulletin boards. The block was lifted late last night after AT&T determined that "the denial-of-service threat no longer existed" and said it would continue to monitor the situation.

AT&T's decision to block portions of the site caused a flurry of angry commentary from users who speculated that the carrier was blocking the site due to its content. Adding to the confusion was the fact that 4chan.org founder Christopher "moot" Poole said that as of yesterday the company hadn't contacted him about its reasons for blocking parts of his site. Poole also advised 4chan users to "call or write customer support and corporate immediately" to complain about the blocking.

AT&T's statement on the blocking is notable because it tries to directly refute accusations that it blocks access to Web sites based on their content. Erling Løken Andersen, the CEO of the Norwegian social networking site Biip.no, got the ball rolling Sunday when he speculated that that AT&T was "firing one of the first shots in the net neutrality war" by blocking the site.

Meanwhile, the Tech Herald reported that several users took AT&T's actions to be related to network neutrality and not related to legitimate network management concerns.

Broadly speaking, net neutrality is the principle that ISPs should not be allowed to block or degrade Internet traffic from their competitors in order to speed up their own. The major telcos have uniformly opposed net neutrality by arguing that such government intervention would take away ISPs' incentives to upgrade their networks, thus stalling the widespread deployment of broadband Internet.

But despite the telcos' objections, the U.S. government has explicitly endorsed net neutrality principles in its latest notice. In addition to requiring applicants to follow the 2005 FCC policy statement, the rules explicitly state that applicants are not allowed to "favor any lawful Internet applications or content over others." The rules do make exceptions for companies that want to offer their own managed services such as telemedicine and long-distance learning, but they also state that such services must use private connections or virtual private networks instead of the public Internet.

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