Big Brother Google is Watching

As many of you might have heard already, the “Musicblogocide 2010” has started. Six music blogs have been torn down by the giant that is Google. Without even a mere warning, these six sites - Pop Tarts, Masala, I Rock Cleveland, To Die By Your Side, It's a Rap and Living Ears – were deleted overnight in their entirety. A messily “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 repeatedly violated Blogger's Terms of Service. . . [and] we've been forced to remove your blog. Thank you for your understanding” was sent to the six account managers the day after deletion. Which makes me think - I thought the point of new new media was to have “total” control of the material you post on the internet.

A little warning before would have been nice.

There were years and years of knowledge and insight in these websites. Not even to mention, those that only used legal material – promotional tracks sent from the record labels themselves- such as Masala (a blog that focuses of obscure music genres that would otherwise get no exposure to the fast world if it weren't for these blogs). It's as UK's Guardian reporter Sean Michael writes: “in a complaint posted by Google Support, Bill Lipold, the owner of I Rock Cleveland, cited four cased in the past year when he had received copyright violation notices for songs he was legally entitled to post”. Here's a note from Blogger about it - and the notification the bloggers are receiving.

These sites were obliterated to bits because of the obscure so called Digital Millennium Copyright Act. These warnings, bloggers report, contain no information or sign of what material they are referring to. Bloggers are left in the dark, putting hundreds of well thought out blog posts on the line, for one piece of their vast blog. This one track, most of the time, puts their whole year's worth of material at risk. What ever happened to a little self defense? Not all blogs were self proclaimed saints, but some of these are legit websites under the payroll of the record labels in charge of these artists. They are promotional tools for the artists themselves.

It's like Kevin O' Keefe, lawyer and blogger, mentions in his “Real Lawyers Have Blogs” post. Are we all at risk? Who is to say everyone of our blogs will not get deleted from one night to the other?

On top of this, why those six blogs? Thousands of individuals acquire their downloads from many existing (and thriving) sites such as Hype Machine and torrent sites like PirateBay, not these small sites.

I'm all for the support of artists and their music. However, Google is a big guy. I don't see the message they are trying to send by removing these music blogs when there are bigger players in the game of music copyright infringement to be up against. It's all but a cowardly move to me. Google should pick on someone its own size.