The news broke today that Google has deleted a number of popular music blogs–erasing years worth of writing and music criticism–over copyright violations. The event has been dubbed Musicblogocide.
According to the Guardian, the owners of these sites received this message from Google: “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.” The list of sites includes: Pop Tarts, Masala, I Rock Cleveland, To Die By Your Side, It’s a Rap and Living Ears.
UPDATE: Google issued a brief post about the deletions. Here’s a dispatch from Pop Tarts Suck Toasted, one of the deleted blogs (and the place where we uncovered this story about Vendela Vida). “Sorry for the mass nature of this little note, but as you may have noticed my blog was murdered … While that is definitely very bad news, the good people of Eardrum NYC managed to collect a good 70-80 percent of my posts from the last 5-years as a cache.”
As digital books become more popular this year, the ways bloggers share eBooks will change as well. What do you think? Could these problems eventually affect eBook bloggers? (Via Joy Press)