Something strange is going on. As CNET's Greg Sandoval reports, Blogetery.com and Ipbfree.com, blog/forum platforms that hosted massive amounts of user-generated content, have been shut down by unnamed law enforcement agencies for unnamed reasons. Blogetery is said to have hosted over 70,000 blogs.

  It is unclear if the two terminations are connected, but it would be a pretty big coincidence if they were not. As Sandoval says, both services have said they are not coming back, both claim to have obeyed copyright law, and both are saying they are legally required not to disclose any information.

A message at Blogetery's site reads:

After being BurstNet customer for 7 months our server was terminated without any notification or explanation.

We're trying to resolve the situation.

So, simply put, lots of user-generated content has been eliminated with no explanation of why, and no government agency has stepped up to at least say it was them who made the order. Naturally, this can only lead to speculation and rumor until someone is able to go on record and take responsibility.  That speculation will only escalate until that happens, and it is already starting throughout the Blogosphere.

Sandoval quotes an official from an ironically unnamed government agency, who says that he doesn't know of any government agencies that have the authority to terminate such services without going through the "legal hoops". (HT: Curt Hopkins)

Any takers?

Update: CNET now reports that the FBI sent Burst.net (which hosted the Blogetery service) a Voluntary Emergency Disclosure of Information request, but never requested Burst's server (the shutting down of which resulted in the termination of Blogetery).

The FBI, apparently found Al-Qaeda-related bomb-making instructions and a "hit list" on Blogetery. It's still not clear why the entire service needed to be shut down, and why Burst decided to go that extra mile, even without instruction to do so from the FBI. Whether or not the Ipbfree incident is related is still unknown. More facts will no doubt be made more clear in time. A big hat tip goes to CNET's Greg Sandoval.