earsucker

When you’re a music blogger, like myself, you get a ton of record labels sending you promotional mp3s and other samples of music to publish on your site. Unfortunately for some bloggers, who published said music on their Google hosted sites (Blogger, blogspot), when Google received a DMCA notice, they yanked the sites — completely.

Without fair warning, Google laid the hammer down, wiping the content and the sites themselves from existence. This happened to Pop Tarts, Masala, I Rock Cleveland, To Die By Your Side, It’s a Rap and Living Ears.

While these sites were hosting music that was authorized to be shared publicly, the record companies (the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing) sent DMCA notices to Google. Google responded to those notices by sending the site owners a letter stating, “We’d like to inform you that we’ve received another complaint regarding your blog. Upon review of your account, we’ve noted that your blog has repeatedly violated Blogger’s Terms of Service … [and] we’ve been forced to remove your blog. Thank you for your understanding.”

That’s it. So it could be years of hard work and love put into these sites, yet Google comes in and whacks it without a care. I guess you get what you pay for when trusting your site to a free server run by a massive global company.

On the other hand, however, when you sign up for these services, you check a box that states that you agree to their terms of service.

At least one of the said blogs has recovered some of their content and has gone the route of hosting their site now. Check out this post where the blogger discusses the Top Ten Tunes That Got Him Booted From Blogger.

You can also read more about this here and here.

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