The US military has banned access to 13 websites - including YouTube, eBay, Amazon, MTV and ESPN

[L. Coyote]

5:57am March 17
Disaster in Japan: Live Blog
http://blogs.aljazeera.net/live/asia/disaster-japan-march-17-live-blog


The US military has banned access to 13 websites - including YouTube, eBay, Amazon, MTV and ESPN on its computer network - to free up bandwidth for relief efforts in Japan, say officers at US Cyber Command. The Pentagon said:

This action is in no way a reflection on any specific site or the content of any specific site ... in response to the needs of the military in a time of extreme demand on all circuits and networks in a region of the world that has been devastated by geological activity.

The step was requested by US Pacific Command, which is overseeing the military's disaster relief efforts, said the Pentagon.

MORE: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x661338

[Jmaxfie1]

1. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now. n/t

[hlthe2b]

2. I can understand this as a temporary measure ...

No criticism here...

[niyad]

4. remember the old saying: "there is nothing so permanent as a temporary measure"

we shall see

[Statistical]

3. Given they are keeping news websites and blocking high bandwidth low priority sites it makes sense.

Likely the 13 websites listed where the highest bandwidth non-news websites.

[JonLP24]

5. That makes sense with ESPN

My browser crashes all the time when I go there. Not every time but most of the time.

[haele]

6. Considering what happened on Friday -

When several West Coast DoD network lost a couple critical "regular use" network servers (not only Japan, which is a major node for the western Pacific networks but the major Hawaii node due to manditory tsunami evacuations, I'd agree to it, too. We were operational, but just - and were still having issues with large file transfers over the last couple days. And for a mission-critical video-conference - oye, that was a nightmare.

For the next couple weeks - at least until they get their infrastructure stable - it's only video and audio streams or video that is banned for general use.

The sailors and soldiers can still get onto FaceBook, regualr Amazon to order stuff, or even continue with their blogs or go on to Twitter (if they do that) - any other site that they could legally get on before (including DU or ICHC!). They just can't download or stream video. (which sucks if they were expecting baby pictures in the E-mail)

This might affect morale of those who live on base, but no one else.

Haele

[Jackpine Radical]

7. Makes absolute sense to me.