Your Favorite White Boy

A number of my online homies have been on the wrong end of a blog deletion recently where weeks, months or even years of work is gone in a flash.  The main offender seems to be Blogger (well, Google) who has been knocking off blogs on the regular. After exploring the issue, it is all starting to make horrifying sense.   Bloggers are at risk.

Why Do They Delete Blogs?

Quick summary: under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), if a copyright holder files a written complaint with your service provider (called a “DMCA complaint”) they can take your blog down.  Here’s the relevant portion of Terms of Service for my hosting company:

“Clients who are the subject of a DMCA notification that meets the below criteria (written notice, etc) be subject to account termination at the Company’s sole discretion.”

Account termination.  Yikes.  And  the DMCA doesn’t even require your Online Serivce Provider (OSP) to delete your account – just “block access” to the material in question.  But OSPs are exempt from liability under the DMCA if they “expeditiously” remove the material in question.  Its called the “safe harbor” provision.  And your blog host doesn’t want to get sued, so they don’t take any chances – hosts just delete the whole account.  Mine can.  Yours can too.

What Can You Do?

Sound hopeless?  Maybe.  But there a few things to do.  The bottom line is that you shouldn’t just give up and assume your blog is gone forever.  Here are some tips and survival strategies to protect your blog from a DMCA-induced nuclear meltdown.

1.  Don’t Assume The Complaint Is Legit

According to one comprehensive study, one third of DMCA complaints are bogus.  Blogger/Google’s official policy is to make a good faith effort to let you know if they get a DMCA complaint (phone number included).  But my friends will tell you that often doesn’t happen. If you get taken down, you can file a counter-notice with your OSP, claiming that the copyright of the music/video etc is not being infringed, the service provider has to put your stuff back within 10 days.  Then the OSP will wait for a lawsuit from the copyright holder.  Here is a quick form that you can fill out and send to your OSP.

2.  Back Up, We Need Back Up

Back up your template and your posts monthly.  Here are some instructions and tools if you host off Blogger/Google.  You may want to keep those files on a personal computer or a hard drive.  Either way, keep them off the host server.  They can then easily be imported into a new file if your blog goes *ahem* missing.

3. Hyperlinking Is Better, But Not Perfect

Most experts believe that if you hyperlink to a music file, rather than actually hosting it on your server, you qualify for “safe harbor” protection and you are exempt from liability.  While there have been some court cases that have rules a hyperlink does constitute copyright infringement, it is much more difficult for someone to file a DMCA notice for just a hyperlink.  But it certainly does happen.  That being said, you’re much more likely to get busted if you’re hosting music rather than linking to it.

As record companies continue to lose money, they will be looking to stem the tide of illegal music.  Now that the RIAA has backed away from suing individuals and going after OSPs, expect a gang of blogs to go down.  Here’s hoping this will give you a quick guide on why this kind of thing happens and what you can do about it.  Good luck with it.

Tags: Blogger, Blogging, Copyright, DMCA, Legal Issues