LiveJournal selling out to Russian government?
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| 26 Nov, 2006 | Share |
With the whole Litvinenko story in the back of my mind, I was surprised to read on www.wired.com that LiveJournal had licensed its entire Russian community to the Russian publisher Sup-Fabrik, a startup financed by Russian oligarch Alexandr Mamut with close ties to the Kremlin. I am even more stunned that so far this news has not made a lot of press because there are some serious question marks to be placed.
LiveJournal is not only big in the US, it is also very popular in Russia where the site is giving the Russians a chance to express themselves away from the controlled media. Especially journalists, intelligentsia and even politicians (albeit not the most important ones) have found their way to the blogging site. Through these Russian journals (700,000 of which an estimated 300,000 are also active) they try to hold some kind of freedom of speech alive.
That same Russian LiveJournal community is now fearing the end of its freedom with the inked deal between LiveJournal creator Brad Fitzpatrick and Alexandr Mamut. According to the Russian bloggers, the deal is so suspicious because they find it very odd that some oligarch is willing to pay so much for something that is not worth so much. Would the Russian government go that far to buy a community to silence the hostile voices ?
Perhaps not. Fitzpatrick obliged the licensee, Sup, to keep the LiveJournal name 'untainted by scandal'. If anything would go wrong SUP would risk losing its contract. Also, in a further move to proove their good faith LiveJournal owner Six Apart and Sup are allowing Russian users to opt out of migration to Sup, keeping all dynamic files exclusively on American soil.
The question remains what Sup intends to do with the community. Sup claims that they purchased the Russian LiveJournal part as the start of a major online media play but knowing that there are parliamentary elections in Russia next year there could well be another reason why the community has been purchased.
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