Bloggaz R.N. Danja!
This week’s big news in music blogging involved Google’s shutdown of six popular music blogs without any warning or any chance for the bloggers to back up their data. Google owns the mega-popular hosted blogging platform Blogger which is best known for attracting beginning bloggers to its blogspot url’s and white-on-black templates.
As you probably know, Google also owns the video platform YouTube, where it has already automated the process of identifying the use of copyright-protected music and shutting those videos down and those users down. Will Blogger be the next to fall under this kind of automated content and account destruction? I don’t know but there is the scent of panic in the air with media referring to this week’s shutdowns as “blogocide” or the “blogocaust”.
It’s natural that Google would want to protect themselves from lawsuits. Being a gigantic aggregator of user generated content while sitting on an unfathomable fortune, makes the company a very prime target for lawsuits. Especially from the ailing music industry whose business model these days seems to involve suing anyone they can.
It’s not evil that Google would want to protect itself. The evil part is they didn’t communicate with these bloggers about the alleged complaints, didn’t give them any notice or any chance to respond.
If you are running your blog on Blogger this should make you very afraid. It could be your blogspot that suddenly gets shut down next.
My mission is to protect you.
We don’t have to sit down and do nothing about this. We can bring your blog to a safehouse and give it a new chance at life.
If Google is Cyberdyne, I’m ready to be the T1000. Not the bad one from the first movie. The good one that you sent back from the future to save you.
If this really is the blogocaust, I’m ready to be Oskar Schindler. When it’s all over I promise I will weep about how I could have saved more of you, if only I could have saved just one more MP3 blogger.
My solution is simple. I’m a web programmer – setting up blogs comes easy to me. If you sign up with the affiliate link I give you for my web host (HostGator), I will do a basic Wordpress blog setup for you on your own domain for free. The blog will have a theme and a couple of essential plugins and it will be easy to administer and update. If you’re hosted on blogger or wordpress.com I will even move your blog posts and comments over to your new site.
Interested? Check for more details on your free blog setup.
I don’t discriminate, I regulate any shade of that ass.
By the way, even if you’re not a music blogger – the deal still applies for you. If you’re not on Blogspot, you’re just starting a new blog – that’s all the better. You can get your free blog set up too.
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Rafi, I might have to take you up on this as I’ve been thinking about getting off blogger for a minute ‘cos wordpress just seems a lot more flexible and now this happens. I might hit you off-blog with questions though after I check this out.
If i really had a chance to be steady bloggin, i might take u up… will have to get back on u tho.
“Google’s shutdown of six popular music blogs without any warning or any chance for the bloggers to back up their data.”
According to a follow-up article in Wired (http://tinyurl.com/yjbct4d – with a link to Google’s own statement on the issue), they DID warn the bloggers… all except one, which Google restored with apologies. Not saying the situation still isn’t scary or even a complete shambles (blogs getting pulled for posting mp3s the labels GAVE them to post?), but apparently the Guardian’s initial report included a little sensationalizing.
Ian / Word,
Let me know if you have any questions about it. There are lots of pluses to self-hosting (having the ability to easily move your site anywhere with the same url, not depending on a free service that could stop one day a la mp3.com or imeem, search engine love for the domain, wordpress being a better tool than blogger).
Werner,
Ah thanks. I’ll have to look into it further.
Hostgator is the worst.
boi-dan,
What’s wrong with Hostgator? I haven’t had any problems with them.
By the way, I can also offer the same deal with Thinkhost but I have never hosted with them.
Here’s a question that I have, though: aren’t you taking a more legal weight in your hands if you’re hosting the songs yourself? I certainly wouldn’t want my Blogger site just suddenly taken down, but it’s still better than actually being singly targeted by a litigious record company or artist, however unlikely that might be.
I just got my first takedown notice, but it was from Dropbox, not Google. I find it very hard to believe that the Blogspot blogs that were taken down were done without any warning. Without warning from Google, maybe, but I’m sure they’d had plenty of takedown notices. On Blogger, it’s Google that bears the brunt until they decide that they’ll just pull the plug. On your own platform…isn’t it you?
Mine was one of the blogs shut down. I moved to livingears.com
My theme sucks.
What would you do to help? Do you have links to examples?
Reid,
Good question and I don’t know that I have all the answers as it’s a nuanced topic. But here’s my understanding rooted in real world experience.
What we call self-hosting is really just hosting on a 3rd party site that you pay for the service. So for legal terms, the relationship is exactly the same. You don’t own the server your site sits on. You’re using someone else’s server and pipe per your mutual agreement – just as with google.
As with blogger, you’re still likely to be linking to mp3’s at 3rd party sites. Because if you actually host a whole bunch of music on your hosting space you will bring on either high bandwidth costs or an angry web hosting company – depending on who you’re renting space from. So in most cases you’re still linking to a music file hosted at a 3rd party site. To my knowledge that’s legally a gray area.
Now for practical terms the difference is huge. Google is a giant target for record companies to focus on. The same was true of large ISP’s in years past when the music industry people used to go after telco’s. They go to one centralized source and put the pressure on them.
It’s far less efficient and worthwhile for them spend their resources going after a blogger at a time or a small web host at a time. And if they do come knocking the web host has the perfect answer if they’re not hosting the mp3’s. It’s not their issue.
The record biz isn’t gonna get into that legal battle with every web host in the world. But they’ll lean on Google and force the issue because Google has a fuckton of bloggers and a fuckton of money.
On top of that when you’re “self-hosting” you have all kinds of backup options so if anything ever does happen you can take your site somewhere else with ease. I get mailed blog backups daily. I don’t even have to think about it.
Scott,
Sorry to hear that. Had they given you warning before the takedown?
As far as themes, I’m a huge fan of Thesis which I run here and elsewhere. It’s a premium theme, costing $87 but to me it’s well worth it. The admin area is powerful in terms of letting you tweak things, the html code it generates is super clean and engineered for search engine magik, it’s constantly getting updated and improved and it’s well-supported by a community and staff at diythemes. Check the link in this site’s footer for more info. If you end up buying it via my link I can do the initial setup for you so it’s no hassle to you.
If you want to use a free theme instead, there are two curated links on the blog setup page that give good options.
One more thing I should mention about Thesis is there’s a 30 day money back guarantee. So it’s risk-free.
Hey this is one of your fellow third tribers and I must say I really respect the way you presented this.
T-1000 is the liquid metal terminator, the bad guy in the second movie. You’re thinking of t-100. Just fyi.