There’s a blog battle going on, and Google, owner of Blogger, is right in the middle. If you’re an amateur music blogger or reader, chances are you’re very familiar with the free blog-hosting service Blogspot. Many of these Blogspot sites host music downloads in MP3 format, and some go as far as sharing entire albums. But this isn’t really news to online music lovers.
What is news is how Google has recently started removing music blogs that don’t comply with its terms of service (you know, that long list of rules you and I skip over after agreeing to any service) — more specifically, the rules relating to its “Digital Millennium Copyright Act” policy. This sudden “crackdown” has caused an outrage among bloggers and readers alike, spawning feverish discussion on message boards everywhere. The problem is many of the affected bloggers technically weren’t breaking any rules and had legal permission to share the music they were linking or hosting; of course, some didn’t.
Google responded to the whole mess today by posting what to do if your blog is incorrectly targeted. It also made it pretty clear that taking blogs offline is not its first step when receiving a DMCA complaint. It claims to first notify the blogger in order to give them time to respond properly to said complaints.
Hopefully those who were wrongfully shut down can resume their blogs after the dust settles, and for those who can’t: consider private hosting on a purchased domain.