US forces to block YouTube, MySpace on DoD network

The US forces will "block worldwide access," to a range of websites including YouTube, MySpace and Photobucket from the unclassified Defense Department internet (or NIPRNET) as of today. In a widely-reported memo, General BB Bell (commander of US forces in Korea) announced the upcoming blocks. He suggested that the changes were …

[Alexander Hanff]

botnets

They would have much more bandwidth if they could secure their networks in the first place. DoD networks are riddled with compromised machines running on botnets. Go figure.

[Anonymous Coward]

Reg humour, how funny

Message says, can't use skynet 5 to view videos... its easy to eat up any sort of fat pipe you lay down.

i think your attempt at making the terminator joke failed.

[amanfromMars]

Canon Fodder

Heaven forbid that civilian views be aired in the military. I suppose they would try to justify it by saying IT was bad for Morale when such a position itself would be at least Immoral .

[Anonymous Coward]

botnets

Perhaps when the guys at the DoD hear the word Botnet they are thinking of a diffrent Bot?

[Mark Hall]

Legit reason

I've been a low-level sysadmin for the U.S. Army - what sort of bandwidth do you all think we can get from equipment we bring in on a truck? There were times when my unit was forced to block webmail and chat sites, because people were sending and receiving too many digital pictures - video was out of the question. I could literally watch my network usage peak out when the guys got open access to the NIPR, and my usage graphs always maxed out at night, when most of the official business quieted down. It is no surprise at all that the Powers That Be have made that a theatre-wide or Army-wide policy.

A lot of deployed units arrange for bandwidth through commercial providers for personal use (even Iraq has local ISPs). The troops that have access to those can still use them for MySpace, YouTube, whatever. Or they can mail home CDs or DVDs they burn on their personal laptops, and get a friend to post them - slower, but still effective. The military networks are supposed to be for government business only, we don't have the money to provide big, thick, high-bandwidth pipes - and seeing a conspiracy to censor the troops in this story requires a dedicated nutcase ready to ignore reality in favor of his pet theory. Too bad there's so many of those...

[kain preacher]

WHy is this even news

Um to the people that think this is an conspiracy t hey are only doing what most of corporate America is doing. I mean so they are telling people you can only use their machines for work. Omg so that makes them evil ??

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems reasonable to me...

I have to agree with Mark and Kain, after all if you were running a company and recreational use of the systems you provided your staff were infringing on the actual business uses then I can't imagine anybody that wouldn't block or ban the large traffic sites.

Just because it's a Government Department doesn't change that any.

[Matt]

So what...???

My access to Youtube, Myspace, etc has been blocked on the company network for years... its common practice, do you see me crying about it?? when on the work network, you work... so tough luck squaddies, try living in the civillian world for once, its not as easy as it seems!!!! :)

[Rob]

Civilian Life....

... I think it's still a lot easier than being shot at by angry arabs who are still going through teen angst.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you kidding me?

Ok, as to "Not fair for soldiers" comment.

- No one made them join the army, there are all kinds of sucky jobs in this world that people do for different reasons. Yes the military is very like a company in alot of respects. And alot of your poverty stricken do not have internet and if they have a computer and it does have a connection, then they might very well be on dialup and pretty much find that alot of those pages have loading problems that make them close to unusable. I know several rural areas where 28k is the top connection speed due to old phone lines.

- Do you work in IT? Do you know what type of struggles and costs large companies have to go through due to trying to maintain bandwith, especially when dealing with remote locations?

- Last of all, I doubt many of us truly know what the military budget is really like, so its hard to just say they have a ton to spend on any one area. You also have to think of where you really think money should go, a couple added comforts or maybe salary increases or more money into technology for defense, intelligence, etc?

There are alot of things to think about. From an IT perspective, most companies are going to monitor their bandwith usage. Personally I'm surprised they even HAD access to those sites on the military network.