Thursday, February 11, 2010

Google shuts down music blogs without warning

Well, slagging off the mainstream media and our criminal political classes and political system is one thing and infringing on copywrite is another. Nevertheless, 'Google' shutting down music blogs without giving their owners any notice or providing them with options, should be a warning to all of us who host our blogs on a free server that is run by a global company. However, it is just another concern that we should have regarding 'Google' and not something we should be particularly worried about when we bear in mind that everything that is published online is cached by 'Google' and, for the time being, they are happier to at least have a record of what we are all writing, while they are hardly going to clamp down on "free speech" which is one of their major selling points.

Nevertheless, 'Google's' antics are generally becoming a bane and as they wipe years of archives off of the internet without explanation it might be time to look elsewhere. Any suggestions for someone who might want to cut his loses and move on? And in the meantime I will heed the last part of  'Google's' letter to those hosting music blogs that have been closed: "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." Yes, time to do a bottom up reading of the terms of service, at least.

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