Akamai Declines to Assist Al-Jazerra Site

AP via Excite News ^ | Apr 4, 2:31 PM (ET) | PETER SVENSSON

[leadpencil1]

Akamai Declines to Assist Al-Jazerra Site

Apr 4, 2:31 PM (ET)

The Web site of Arab satellite news channel Al-Jazeera was refused assistance this week when it sought help from Akamai Technologies Inc. (AKAM) of Cambridge, Mass., in dealing with hacking attacks and massive interest from Web users.

"We think it's political pressure," said Nabil Hegazi, deputy managing editor of Al-Jazeera's English-language Web site.

Akamai rents out a network of 12,600 servers that help customer Web sites deal with unexpected traffic, hacker attacks and Internet bottlenecks.

In a prepared statement, Akamai said it "worked briefly this week with Al Jazeera to understand the issues they are having distributing their websites," but decided not to continue the relationship.

Akamai would not comment Friday on why it broke off the collaboration.

Al-Jazeera drew intense interest and criticism after it carried Iraqi TV footage of dead and captive U.S. soldiers. U.S. television networks had decided not to air footage of the corpses. Al-Jazeera later honored a U.S. request to stop until families could be notified.

Its English-language Web site was brought down by Internet attacks soon after it debuted last week, and the Arabic page was unavailable for long periods as well. Hackers calling themselves the "Freedom Cyber Force Militia" later diverted visitors seeking the English site to a page with a U.S. flag.

Al-Jazeera said this week that steps were being taken to protect its servers against hackers. The English-language page went back online by Thursday evening U.S. time, but by Friday afternoon, the full text of the stories was again unavailable. Al-Jazeera's night staff did not know what the problem was.

Web portal Lycos reported that Al-Jazeera's site was the most sought-after on the Internet last week.

Al-Jazeera is based in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar. It has received funding by Qatar's government but is an unusually independent voice in the Arab world.

Its reporters were banned from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange last week, but the exchange has indicated that it might be willing to reconsider its decision.

[Maximum Leader]

Hey, isn't Akamai the company who lost a vice president on one of the 9/11 airliners? If I remember correctly, he was an Israeli army veteran (I wonder if Al Jareeza reported the Arab rumor that the Jews were behind 9/11 and they had all been warned).

[dighton]

Akamai exec killed in hijacking

Daniel Lewin, Akamai's co-founder and chief technical officer, was on board American flight 11 bound from Boston to Los Angeles, the company said.

.......

Previous to his years at Akamai, he worked for IBM's research laboratory in Haifa, Israel. He also served for more than four years in the Israel Defense Forces, the company said.

[what's up]

Canada is trying to get Al-Jazeera on cable...why doesn't Al-Jazeera go a to a Canadian tech company for help?

[Maximum Leader]

Ha, Al-Jazerra called the WRONG company for help!

[b4its2late]

Good for Akamai Technologies Inc.

[jandwi]

Akamai's founder was an Israeli who was on one of the flights that crashed into the WTC.

[Timesink]

Gee, do you think it could have anything to do with the fact that one of Akamai's COFOUNDERS was on board one of the WTC 9/11 jets? I'll bet some newbie imbecile in sales got the account, and one of the executives probably exploded with anger when he found out.

[Timesink]

Practically all Israelis are Israeli army veterans, aren't they?

[observer5]

Maybe its also time for Cisco to stop building equipment for China to censor the Internet for Chinese people.

[Maximum Leader]

Correct. They draft every male and female when they get out of high school (I understand that there religious exemptions for males and other exemptioins for females). The men then serve in the reserves for 30 years.

There are also non-Israeli Jews who go Israel to serve in the military. For example, Congressman Rahm Emmaneul or the novelist Mark Helprin (who wrote Bob Dole's wonderful acceptance speech back in 1996). I don't if Daniel Lewin was an Israeli or an American who went to Israel for the purpose of serving in the military.

[jandwi]

Danny Lewin from Akamai was an officer in the Israeli army for 4 years.

http://www.akamai.com/en/html/about/management_dl.html

[iliv2rideinaz]

there are no canadian tech companies.