Edit: Someone delete this. The reason for me not being able to start the mission was because I forgot Long War adds a delay for a satellite launches. Herp derp.
Occasionally, when a mod page loads, the page will (erroneously) say that it hasn't been published by the author yet. Reloading fixes this, most of the time.
Valve has plenty of great ways to squeeze more money out of people. They really don't need to resort to breaking the gaming community's things so they'd be the only service available. ;D
Judging by Google Trends, I'd guess it's a surge in activity. Searches like "skyrim mods" aren't classified as "rising" but "breakout", meaning they're rising and bloody fast too. Today is easily the peak for related terms over the past 7 days.
galdran: Your IP address probably changed. Unless you have a static IP address (which would be a rarity for residential ISP connections unless you specifically asked for it), your IP address will likely change after some time (that being whenever your router renews its DHCP lease).
I assume that you're talking about the backup binary that the modpatcher itself creates? Because I've thoroughly thwacked that. Perhaps I have to do some more hammering...