AT&T has made even more people than usual angry when it started blocking/filtering parts of 4chan late last night. The popular message board, famous for being able to brew online (and offline) shitstorms like no other web property could, saw portions of its publication – including /r9k/ and the infamous /b/ – blocked for AT&T customers across the United States. Quickly enough, there was a lot of rallying going on, with 4chan members and fans virtually gathering to plot digital riots and all-round mayhem.

An update on the situation as of 8 AM Eastern Time: access to 4chan has apparently been restored, with AT&T reportedly confirming the hours-long block of portions of the site, “following the practices of their policy department.” AT&T went on to say that they contacted (or at least attempted to contact) the owners of 4chan, which Moot vehemently denies.

AT&T’s YellowPages subsidiary purchased the two-letter domain name YP.com (now redirects to yellowpages.com) last month from the company LiveDeal (formerly YP Corp.).

A SEC filing has now revealed that YellowPages acquired the domain name for a cool $3,850,000 in cash payment. That’s a lot of money for an admittedly valuable domain name, especially during this economic downturn. It probably didn’t hurt that YP.com was actually operational and generating revenue for LiveDeal, but we should also note that this amount is roughly half of the publicly listed company’s current market cap.