A very nasty thing happened to me on Friday night. BLOGGER SHUT ME DOWN!
No notice, nothing! I was happily typing away – and my blog disappeared. And so did my Google account. In fact, all my blogs disappeared. This was just before midnight on Friday night. And when I got up on Saturday after a pretty sleepless night, it had been reinstated – with an apology for the inconvenience – but no explanation whatsoever!
I’ve since done a little research, and Google can just close you down if they thing you’ve contravened their terms and conditions – or if they think you’re a spamming site. Neither of which applied to me!
Here’s a quote from About.com:
“the problem of “splogging” (blogs set up as a new form of spam, often stealing copyrighted material in doing so) is such a huge problem for them that they frequently have “false positives”, i.e., mark a legitimate blog as spam and remove it. I’ve heard of this happening to several business owners. In every case, Blogger reinstated their blogs with no loss of content, but it usually took 2-3 days”
Mine was actually reinstated in a matter of hours – but it was a very nasty shock, as it meant I couldn’t access my web hosting site (as I used my gmail email address) nor my PayPal or eBay or Etsy etc etc. So I was virtually wiped off the face of the earth! Friday 13th, alright!
And as I have several other blogs: Computery (with Blogger and computer tutorials) Blogology (free blog backgrounds, headers, buttons etc) Freebies (free images for personal use) as well as this blog, I was horrified to find that anyone with a Blogger blog DOES NOT OWN THEIR OWN CONTENT.
Not only are Picasa albums automatically created when you have a Blogger blog – all your blog images are hosted there, even without you knowing about it (you’ve got one even if you didn’t open an account – go and check. These are public by default and someone somewhere could be dowloading all your artwork with you none the wiser – this must be where spolgging started! Google reserves the right to use your blog content too.Also without your knowing about it. And to shut you down without notice.
They also contradict themselves here:
Blogger Content Policy
Blogger is a free service for communication, self-expression and freedom of speech. We believe Blogger increases the availability of information, encourages healthy debate, and makes possible new connections between people.
We respect our users’ ownership of and responsibility for the content they choose to share. It is our belief that censoring this content is contrary to a service that bases itself on freedom of expression.
In order to uphold these values, we need to curb abuses that threaten our ability to provide this service and the freedom of expression it encourages. As a result, there are some boundaries on the type of content that can be hosted with Blogger. The boundaries we’ve defined are those that both comply with legal requirements and that serve to enhance the service as a whole.
and
Terms of Service
Your Intellectual Property Rights. Google claims no ownership or control over any Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services. You or a third party licensor, as appropriate, retain all patent, trademark and copyright to any Content you submit, post or display on or through Google services and you are responsible for protecting those rights, as appropriate. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Google services which are intended to be available to the members of the public, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, publish and distribute such Content on Google services for the purpose of displaying and distributing Google services. Google furthermore reserves the right to refuse to accept, post, display or transmit any Content in its sole discretion.
You represent and warrant that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the rights granted herein to any Content submitted.
Anne at El Milagro sent the above to me (thanks Anne!) I find all this seriously frightening. Friday night I actually felt nauseous.
I’ve since found out that WordPress.com (the free one) has a similar policy, but if you self-host and use WordPress.org you do own your own content.
Tumblr allows people to reblog and apparently you can’t migrate your blog to another format if you want to leave them. I have emailed them re polices on blog content and images, so will keep you posted.
Here are some links if you would like to read up on it yourself:
So the concensus pretty much seems to be to host your blog yourself. BUT…hosting your Blogger blog or WordPress.com blog isn’t any protection, although hosting your own WordPress.org blog IS – but it’s not that easy to set up, although hosting services like Go Daddy have an automated set up. (Wish the one I just purchased had it – too late now).
TypePad I’m not sure about – plus you have to pay monthly, on top of the hosting fee if you’re self-hosting – so I’m none too sure about that one!
Having been reading computer magazines like crazy since Saturday, it seems WordPress.org is the way to go, but it is a learning curve (I should know, I tried the free site twice and then gave up). Perhaps the third try is the charm!
So I will keep you posted. I am now very actively looking for the best solution – if anyone has any suggestions, I’d be very happy to read them.
