It never ceases to amaze me how little time the US news media devotes to reporting when net filtering happens in Russian republics. They go crazy when China blocks access to porn and Iran blocks news, but when bloggers in Bashkortostan get blocked the silence is deafening.

Residents of Bashkortostan, a central-southern Russian region, found their access to the popular LiveJournal blogging website blocked Tuesday, after a court ordered an opposition blog to stop publishing.

As the Kasparov.ru online newspaper reports, internet providers in the region were ordered to limit user access to the IP address used by the “Revinform” online news agency.  When two providers complied, some 63% of the republic’s residents lost access to all blogging content on LiveJournal.  Authorities were apparently unaware that the shut-down, which affected thousands of bloggers, would be so wide-reaching. (The Other Russia)

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