WordPress.com, the hosted blog service from Automattic has suffered a major outage today, bringing down millions of free blogs, and a number of well known blogs.

The outage started at around 1pm US PST (8am AEDT), and at the time of writing (2:50pm PST) all sites on WordPress.com remain offline.

“VIP” sites affected include the GigaOm network, TechCrunch, and the entire Cheezeburger network.

There are reports that the front page of WordPress.com at one stage displayed the message “There was a small systems error. Please try refreshing the page and if the error is still there drop us a note and let us know,” however we are unable to get the page to load at all.

As Allen Stern at CenterNetworks points out, the outage comes less than 2 weeks since TechCrunch moved from Rackspace to WordPress.com.

More when available.

Update: back up as at 3:40pm PST.

WordPress.com Suffers Major Outage is a post from: The Inquisitr

Liskula Cohen: The “Skanks In NYC” Blog Lawsuit

The “Skanks In NYC” blog refers to Liskula Cohen as a “skank” and “old hag,” among other things.

“Don’t you guys think she should grow and an get on with her life?” one post reads. “I mean really, 40 year old women (or in her case that look 40) shouldn’t be out at night looking and acting like ho’s.”

Cohen wants Google to reveal the identity of the person behind the blog and has filed a defamation suit in Manhattan’s Supreme Court to try to make it happen, the New York Daily News reports.

Liskula Cohen’s “Skanks In NYC” lawsuit suggests the comments on the Blogger.com-hosted site are libelous and defamatory.

The blogger is identified only as “livenandlove.”

About Liskula Cohen

Liskula Cohen has modeled for campaigns by Versace and Giorgio Armani. She was in the news last summer when the doorman at Manhattan’s Hudson Hotel was arrested after allegedly cracking a glass vodka bottle on Cohen’s face.

Blogger Identity Lawsuits

Google and other blog-hosting providers have been sued in similar suits plenty of times before. Google India is currently facing a lawsuit by an Indian construction company that wants to know the identity of a blogger posting negative things about its business on a Google-hosted site. AOL also recently received a subpoena for it to reveal the identity of a blogger writing critical comments about the Memphis Police Department on an AOL-hosted blog. That case was eventually dropped.

Traditionally, most of the blog hosting companies have not willingly divulged blogger identities. Google has yet to issue any public comment on the Liskula Cohen “Skanks In NYC” blog lawsuit.

Model Liskula Cohen Sues Google Over “Skanks In NYC” Blog is a post from: The Inquisitr