The strategy worked pretty well for Mubarak in Egypt.
Heading over to the Google (GOOG) Transparency tool this weekend shows that escalating tensions between the Citizenry of Libya and their leader Moammar Gadhafi have incited the leadership to cut off portions of the Internet.
One such bastion of revolution is YouTube, pictured below:
It appears that YouTube was almost entirely shut off the morning of February 17th and continues to be offline. There are also reports of FaceBook and Twitter blockage.
A tertiary concern (below loss of life and unstable governments) of Libya shutting off its Internet is all of the URL shortening companies –Bit.ly being the most prominent – that use the .ly suffix could be affected if Libya turns off its top-level DNS servers. At this point, it seems unlikely to do so as it seems to be targeting small swaths of Internet. As an aside, Google uses Greenland for its Goo.gl shorteners.
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