Curious

Why Have Hackers Hit Russia’s Most Popular Blogging Service?

With around 5 million Russian accounts read by some 30 million people per month, LiveJournal has emerged as the country’s last truly free and public space for political debate, a chaotic kind of intellectual clearinghouse and the source of not only gossip, conspiracy theories and pro-government propaganda, but also countless revelations of corruption and official incompetence. In terms of the sheer variety of opinions expressed and defended on LiveJournal, it has been leagues ahead of Russia’s other media.

And it’s that diversity, say experts, that is the ultimate target of these attacks. They seem to be trying to divert and restrict the political discussion to media the government can more readily control. “There’s no ideology at play here, unless you want to talk about an anti-blogging ideology,” says Alexander Plushchev, Russia’s leading commentator on issues of the Internet.

In the lead-up to Russia’s parliamentary elections in December, and the crucial presidential vote next March, Litvinovich of BestToday.ru expects the attacks will continue. “The goal here is to discredit LiveJournal, which had introduced a wild card into the political system,” she says. “It had become a real instrument of influencing public opinion, and it was not under anyone’s control.” So whether or not any government officials are behind the attack, some of them are likely relieved to have a break from LiveJournal politics.

Read the rest of this article here. And a more recent article about the current attack here. This is why Livejournal deals with DDoS attacks so often (like it seems to be now).

So it may be down, but it’s down for providing free speech.