It seems Microsoft has taken steps to force Neowin.net offline. After Neowin posted a P2P SDK, Microsoft apparently retaliated by having them taken offline through means which remain unclear. It is not known how long their website will be unavailable. We will stay with the story and bring you more when it is available.

Update - Neowin has added this message from to their front page:

"Yesterday at 12am GMT Neowin was taken offline when our provider received a "Demand for Immediate Takedown" order from a Microsoft contracted company that investigates illegal activity on the Internet for Microsoft. The email was sent to the provider and not to the Server admins that lease the server, IPS or Neowin -its fair to say this went 3 levels above our heads and 2 above IPS.

Neowin and IPS did not have the chance to remove the said content before the provider deleted (access to) the contents of the server without contacting Neowin or IPS. Charles received a copy of the email that Microsoft sent and we can confirm it was a standard "remove content" email that did not warrant a total shutdown.

At the moment we are awaiting a response from the Server provider who at this moment does not seem to understand the extent of this action. We are confident that Microsoft are happy with the removal of the reported post and we have spoken to Microsoft UK who have been willing to investigate the nature of this report. Several sites including ZDNet and Activewin have shown some support and we thank them for informing our userbase of this problem that is as of yet unresolved."