I think it's generally because glass bottles can let light hit the beer, and hops are photosensitive (light-struck beer will have a skunky aroma and taste). Brown bottles are the best at blocking light. Clear and green bottles are pretty bad. Cans obviously block all light.
I think most of the time, brown bottles are just fine, but the judges probably have a bit of bias here on their preferences.
My tin-foil-hat conspiracy theory is that ISPs switch peoples' Internet off intermittently to see if anyone notices and save on bandwidth. And they only switch it back on when you call in to tech support.
The number of times I've had Internet issues, restarted my modem and router and have it not fix the problem, but when I restart them when I'm on the phone with tech support and it magically fixes the problem just makes me so damn suspicious...