The War on Blogs

A few months back I was asked to provide some insight on an emerging trend in the music blogosphere for Modern Acoustic magazine.

The piece was focused on the sudden disappearance of blog posts across the web, which was clearly happening on sites that published through the Blogger platform.   Putting two and two together, it became apparent to all that Blogger’s parent company, a little place called Google, had begun to enforce DMCA copyright policy on behalf of the record labels in a whole new manner.  Without explanation and in many cases without any notice at all, Google began completely deleting blog posts that were the target of infringement complaints.

That was November, and much of the chatter around the situation was speculation; albeit speculation based on what was fairly apparent to everyone involved.  Four months later the conversation about this in the blogosphere has intensified.  On Wednesday, LA Weekly published an in-depth story on what’s happening.

Rather than repeat what’s already been said, we recommend checking out the finer points there.  My personal take on can be found in the Modern Acoustic article.   The entire issue is available for download as a PDF here.
All in all a very interesting development in the world of blogging, and certainly something that will have a profound impact on both the digital world and the music industry going forward.

Bonus Note: The LA Weekly article was written by a fantastic writer that I’ve had the pleasure of trading notes with a few times in the past.  His blog Passion of the Weiss is definitely worth a visit for anyone interested in great new music.