Why So Many Sites Block Romania

It's hard to know where to start with this one. Seems some 14-year-old kid in Romania was blackmailing a MySpace teen with threats of 'send me your naked pics or I'll deface your account'. She told her boyfriend, he traced the kid's IP address and then bribed the local ISP to get the kid's street address. (All parties involved were apparently living within blocks of one another in Romania). Now, somewhere along the lines the boyfriend and girlfriend had actually gone to the police over the matter. Which is good, because when the boyfriend found out it was a 14-year-old kid, he was just going to forget about it. But the police persisted and confiscated the kid's computer.

Turns out, not only is the boyfriend able to bribe the local ISP, he's also able to get confidential information out of the local police. As he explains, "remember, i live in romania, the country of all posibilities" [sic]. The police investigation reveals the kid was involved in a lot more than stalking girls on MySpace. He was breaking into and then selling Yahoo, MSN, and ICQ accounts and also peddling stolen credit card numbers. So the boyfriend complains in this forum post, "People like him are the reason that when i enter escrow.com into my adress bar it says... Your access to Escrow.com has been denied. I think romania is the only country blocked by them ". Which is essentially the same complaint that Romanian gamers have petitioned the EU about.

Obviously, it's really great the stalker was stopped. And it's good to know the police persisted and discovered this kid's other illegal activities. But I have to wonder, in a country where some guy off the street can bribe the local ISP to give out home addresses, and can obtain confidential investigation information from the local police, how easy is it going to be for Romanian officials to stem the flow of cybercrime that's getting their country blackballed from sites all across the Internet?