Fuck Typepad, wordpress, blogger, google etc...and if blogger adds anymore bullshit in the name of "progress" fuck it I'll be done here at amsam.org. I'm so goddamn sick of these third party motherfuckers profiling, monitoring, documenting and selling my thoughts and comments. I'm just about done with the intertoobs.

It seemed in the lead up to the American prez elections that more and more restrictions - allegedly to prevent spam were being placed on blogs by the proprieters of blogdom's backends (fair dinkum that's what they call that part "the Backend" such as Typepad, Wordpress or google's Blogger). The restrictions seemed, to us anyway, to be aimed more at preventing us from constructing the lengthy articles replete with hyperlinks to justify our point of view, than stopping spammers who usually only carry one link back to their own site or blog.

I have only found one publication devoted to this issue Access Denied The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering

edited by Ronald Deibert, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, and
Jonathan Zittrain. This book (made available for download as a zipped up PDF) expends a deal of energy worrying about the raw deal the peeps in Uzebekistan get but doesn't worry too much about the more nefarious techniques being used on those of us taught to believe that our society is free.
There is a fairly telling piece at the conclusion of the amerikan section:

Although the United States and Canadian Internet are often thought to be relatively free from technical Internet filtering, Internet activity is far from “unregulated.” With respect to online surveillance, the United States may be among the most aggressive states in the world in terms of monitoring online conversations. Lawmakers in both countries have imposed Internet-specific regulation that can limit their citizens’ access and view of the Internet. In addition, they have empowered private individuals and companies to press Internet intermediaries for content removal or to carry out the filtering in the middle of the net-work. Although the laws are subject to legislative and judicial debate, these private actions may be less transparent.

Without boring with reams of technical explanations, I managed to prove that the chief identifier used by the blocking system was the MAC (media access control) address, a unique 48 bit hexadecimal code attached to every network interface card at manufacture. This network interface card (wireless connected, fibre or UTP) and it's unique identifier is essential for communication between computers - be it your room mate's across the hall or NOW ANYWHERE IN the world.
The blocking preventing those declared 'undesirable' or whatever may be a more recent iteration of ECHELON or may just be an arrangement between english media proprietors eager to cop an invite to lunch with england's movers and shakers, who knows or cares?
In the end it doesn't matter who it is that is trying to control the circulation of what is said on the internet, what is important is how it is being done and the best way to defeat it.

Obviously publicity helps although we need to accept that by the time the inertia of politicians is overcome those seeking to limit our expression will have moved onto new methods.

there are blogging systems where the user has more control over comments than typepad? Joomla, drupal, plone, etc? This is a death by slow cuts. Surely there are blogs with longer more involved posts? Typepad, Wordpress, and blogger -- as per the dictates of concentration capitalism -- are behaving like coke, pepsi, and..... -- well, they'll get down to two eventually.

Also see, Open Net Initiative

It's all about control. Both 'Open Net Initiative' and 'Committee to Protect Bloggers' also seems to track global internet filtering, while Global Voices Advocacy is a project of 'Global Voices Online' which seeks to build a global anti-censorship network of bloggers and online activists throughout the developing world it says nothing of tracking the so called, "free and civilized" worlds censorship and their propecia sophisticated filtering technologies.

ECHELON, and Carnivore The Defense Signals Directorate (DSD) indeed.

Finally, lest ye forget, Third under sea Cable Cut

Foot note: Israel was unaffected by the outages because its Internet traffic is connected to Europe through a different undersea cable.

Internet and phone communications between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia have been seriously disrupted after submarine cables were severed.