Letters have no Arms woke up to an email with a rather ominous subject today:
"Blogger DMCA takedown notificati
We've received one before and therefore already knew what it was going to tell us, and more importantly, what it meant to our blog: a post will have been removed. Not just the offending song(s), nope, the entire post. It seems that, ironically, on their crusade to protect the rights of their clients' creations, our words and our creations are of no value and importance whatsoever. This is exactly why we, and many other blogs, have a pleasant little text on the side of our page, saying "if you want us to take anything down, please tell us and we will immediately etc etc"... Deleting everything means we LOSE what we wrote.
Of course it also means that we don't actually know which artists we shouldn't include in the future. We don't know who we offended. The procedure therefore mostly seems to be an intimidation tactic. Sort of a "hey, are you sure you really want to keep blogging? You do know we can do anything we want with you, right?".
i.e. An utterly depressing situation.
It's also obviously something we can't win. They're big, we're small. End of story. We could try and fight it, but we would just end up having our entire blog deleted.
I also know however that they're fighting a war they can't possibly win. The ball is rolling, and there's nothing they will ever be able to do to stop it. A better solution will definitely have to be thought up. Until then, I guess we'll simply have to continue putting up with this farce.
By way of an experiment, I'm going to attempt to have my own post taken down. This post in fact. I'm going to attach an mp3 I know for a fact will not have any obvious legal repercussions (it's by my brother), and will then (anonymously) write to Blogger, requesting it be taken down, using the template below. I'm rather curious to see what happens... Of course I am using a picture that I myself did not take, so maybe they'll beat me to it!
Michael Beijer - Day One Cambados Advent Calendar
Go here for a great article entitled 'Are Music Blogs under Fire?'
Go here for a great article entitled 'Are Music Blogs under Fire?'
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