THE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE version of Al Jazeera’s website was test-launched early last week, but became inaccessible almost immediately and has been down ever since. It appears that American hackers are the most likely culprits. (For a brief period last week, those who tried to access the site were referred to a page with a notice that read “Hacked by Patriot, Freedom Cyber Force Militia” and a logo containing the American flag.) But what does it mean when reports say the site has been the target of a “data bombing” or “denial of service attack”–and is that really what’s keeping the site off the Internet?

On the day the site was launched, the search engine Lycos reported that “Al Jazeera” was the number one search term, beating out Oscar coverage, and even “sex.” And Google, the leading search engine, said “Al Jazeera” was the term that showed the greatest increase in the week ending March 31.