alexpgp | ЖЖ против Путина?

More about that Kremlin-shut-down-LJ rumor.

I went back and found the article I saw yesterday on gazeta.ru (in Russian, naturally). Here's part of the screenshot:

The title of the piece reads, literally, "LJ Against Putin." The meat is in the last paragraph of the short item, and reads:

А в сети, между тем, уже появились сообщения о том, что сбой LiveJournal связан чуть ли не с происками Кремля. Дело в том, что накануне в России о себе заявила молодежная организация «Идущие без Путина», объединяющая студентов, недовольных отменой льгот на проезд в транспорте и возможной ликвидацией отсрочек от службы в армии. Посредством «Живого журнала» 29 января «Идущие без Путина» собирались организовать «Марш протеста против кремлевского произвола».

Meanwhile, messages have already appeared online saying that the LiveJournal failure is all but the result of a Kremlin intrigue. It turns out that the evening before, a youth organization calling itself "Progressing Without Putin" had announced its existence. The organization, which unites students dissatisfied with the abolition of reduced mass transit fares and the possible elimination of deferrals from military service, had been using LiveJournal to organize a "Protest march against Kremlin abuse of power" on January 29.

Though we live in interesting times, I suspect the cause of the blackout will turn out to be much more mundane, and that this is yet another example of sensationalizing or "creating" news.

Cheers...

UPDATE: Interesting critique of this squall-in-a-teapot at webplanet.ru ("Как Mignews.com и «Эхо Москвы» сморозили глупость, и все ее перепечатали" ("How Mignews.com and Ekho Moskvy said something stupid and everyone repeated it."), which lays the blame for the propagation of this "paranoid" story on automated news scrapers (hat tip: