It looks like AOL just did some­thing nasty.  Accord­ing to reports at Slash­dot and reports here on LJ, AOL is block­ing just about every­thing Live­Jour­nal related.  Many hosts (Geoc­i­ties and Angle Fire, for instance) block link­ing images.  This makes sense because the images–and the pages that are sup­posed to host them–are hosted for free by these ser­vices.  They get income by forc­ing adver­tis­ing on your pages.  If you link an image directly, they have no ad, get no money, and have to pay for the band­width.  This is reasonable. 

AOL, on the other hand, has blocked EVERYTHING from Live­Jour­nal.  They blocked image link­ing (like many other sites), which is no big deal.  The impor­tant thing is that they blocked nor­mal link­ing, too!  Basi­cally, any­thing (a link, a pic­ture, etc) from a page on www.livejournal.com to AOL gives a 404.  Paste the same link into your browser directly, and you get the con­tent.  Strangely, their fil­ters do not catch other sub­do­mains (like a paid account domain like brienigma.livejournal.com).

Peo­ple are say­ing this is a mis­take and they prob­a­bly meant to only block images.  Other peo­ple are say­ing it is a conspiracy–LJ is the biggest web log site out there and AOL just launched their own (com­pet­ing) web log ser­vice.  Sparse reports also men­tion that email from @livejournal.com, like noti­fi­ca­tions, is also blocked.  AOL sup­pos­edly installed a new spam fil­ter today, too.

I urge any­one who still uses AOL to con­sider the alternatives–especially if you are still going to be using Live­Jour­nal.  There are numer­ous other ways of get­ting on the net out there.

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