U.S. Military Blocks Websites to Focus on Japan Efforts

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The U.S. military personnel will be getting a dose on what it feels like to be in China, but not for entirely the same reasons. They’ve blocked 13 websites, including YouTube, to free up bandwidth for the Japan recovery effort.

The sites most proven to suck up bandwidth have been excluded from staff, and not because of their content. The block, of course, is temporary and will “increase or decrease in the size and scope as necessary,” according to an e-mail message acquired by CNN.

Amazon, eBay and Metacafe are some of the sites being blocked. It’s also probably not a large surprise that most on the “list” are video sites, given what’s needed to stream video.

In Japan, the military effort is known as Operation Tomodachi. “Tomodachi,” quite poignantly, is the word for “friendship” in Japanese.

According to a U.S. Strategic Command spokesman, “We are doing this to facilitate the recovery efforts under way in Japan. We are trying to make sure we are giving them as many avenues and as much support as we can.”

Blocked Sites:

YouTube
Google Video
Amazon
ESPN
eBay
Doubleclick
Eyewonder
Pandora
StreamTheWorld
MTV
Spike TV
Metacafe
MySpace

(via CNN)

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