Just a quick FYI on the state of music blogs and .mp3 sharing. Last week Google and its affiliate, Blogger, shut down a number of music related blogs citing that they had been violating their terms of agreement by posting copyrighted material without the permission from the holders.
Now if that were the case, I think it obviously appropriate to remove these sites from the interwebs because not only are they violating the terms of service, but they’re breaking the law – which would ultimately be the responsibility of Blogger.
However, as it turns out (and it’s a bit complicated), these blogs in general, did have permission to post the stuff they had on their sites. But just like a gov’t cleanup job, the left hand doesn’t seem to know what the right hand is doing and while “cleaning up” these blogs, deleted a LOT of people’s hard work and countless hours of time consumption.
So let’s be clear, Blogger went in to a number of its hosted web sites and deleted these blogs completely (which of course technically they have the right to do). They didn’t send a cease and desist notice. They didn’t suspend the account, they didn’t just remove one or two posts or put the posts temporarily into draft mode. They completely obliterated blogs with years worth of posts and effort… and as it turns out, for no good reason.
Take a look at a couple of these stories that can explain it far better than I can, with much more detail and with specific examples about the DMCA and Blogger’s responses as to how they handled the situation and why they handled it the way they did.
It’s pretty lame and discouraging reading, but it’s important.
Pitchfork
The Daily Swarm
True Slant
irockcleveland’s Blogger help ticket
This discussion currently has 7 responses.
February 15, 2010
I’m shocked that they can just eliminate written work along with free and legal mp3′s. The record industry just gets more silly every day. I’ve found and bought so much music directly due to sampling on music blogs. They are just so ridiculously stupid. Sorry to resort to childish name calling, but what else can it be called?
February 15, 2010
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/02/the-day-the-music-blogs-died-behind-googles-musicblogocide.ars
“The fact that someone else has permission to post a copyrighted work does not in fact give you the permission to do so as well. Other sites may have paid money, done a promotional deal, or entered into numerous other arrangements for the rights to offer those tracks, and such rights may be time-limited; just seeing tracks available for download doesn’t mean that they can be hosted elsewhere.”
Who knew?
February 16, 2010
I haven’t read all of the details, but for some of these sites, his seems like less the music industry and more the Google staff acting rashly and without doing much poking. Granted, it is there right to delete any blog in their database, it says so right in their terms of use, but Christ… could you image if we lost EVERYTHING we had been posting on Row Three for the past years, with no chance of ever recovering it? I’d be heartbreaking.
February 16, 2010
I hear your point Jonathan. While definitely a Google issue, the “industry” has created a climate of fear and confusion leading companies to make rash decisions such as this for fear of violating copyright whether real or imagined.
February 16, 2010
That said (re: Google), I wouldn’t be surprised if RIAA legal departments were sending C&D notices based on materials their marketing departments sent out.
Another reminder to back up content regularly to a separate location. I forget to do that as often as I should.
April 7, 2010
Looks like Google did another round of cleaning house.
http://www.eggcityradio.com/?p=448
May 3, 2010
I think they’ve taken down one of my favorite movie news sites:
http://theplaylist.blogspot.com/
Ah!