Reply #52: Here's what I think happened, slackmaster. This sort of thing is FRIGHTFULLY easy.

[Occulus]

Everyone with a blog that discusses content in the least bit political or controversial is vulnerable to this. What can happen is, an "agency" (and I do not mean, one acting in an official capacity here, but in more general terms of the word) decides that they want to shut down discussion of a particular topic, or on a particular site, so they start posting items they know violate the host's TOS in the comments of various articles. These items can be anything from pirate software links to personal information of any kind, so long as it flagrantly violates the host's TOS. Submissions containing illegal or quasi-legal content are most often used, but anything that violates the TOS will do.

The host then, in accordance with the TOS, revokes access, even possibly turning the content over to law enforcement if the ruse is convincing enough. It is entirely within the realm of possibility (although admittedly unlikely) that Brad is in moderate-to-very serious trouble with the law at the moment for something of which he has no knowledge and no involvement, and him asking the host won't do any good at all if that's the case. More likely is that the blog and all its contents have simply been deleted from the host's servers and Brad will no longer be allowed to publish from that host.

All this has happened before, I believe to another DUer. I recall reading about it somewhere some time ago, and I think I remember that it was here, though I could be wrong.