So, now I understand why all these music blogs, that were hosted on Blogger, were taken down by Google a few weeks ago. Google’s official statement was that if they received numerous DMCA complaints about a a specific blog they would automatically remove the blog without any notice. That’s all fine and dandy, and in some respects should happen, but not if the RIAA and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) are deliberately expediting the process. By expediting the process I’m only referring to what has happened to Boom Boom Chik in the past week, and I’m sure a whole bunch of other music blogs out there that have already met their fate.

On February 26th i was sent an email via Blogger (BBC was once hosted on Blogger) that stated Blogger got a DMCA complaint on a post of a re-work done by Mark Lam of an old school house track. At first I was like no big deal maybe something happened with the label/artist and they wanted it off, but no less than 5 hours later I got 5 more DMCA complaints for music that I posted as far back as Jan ’09. 4 out the 5 tracks that were posted in each respective post was music sent to me by either the artist, PR firm, or label, all free to blog/download.

Compared to some of the other music blogs out there, BBC is smaller, so there is not as much content to share with the world.  If a smaller blog like this one, which got 5 complaints in one day, had to remove violating content, then the bigger ones probably got 5x as much all in a relatively short period of time, and in accordance with Google’s policy,  they will remove your blog.

Underneath it all you can’t blame Blogger/Google completely. As an international corporation they are obligated to comply with the laws of the world to not violate or infringe on the legitimate work of copyrighted material. There is no if, ands, or buts with that, but it can be changed if people would just communicate more efficiently and focus more. (Google never contacted the blogs in question, they just deleted them)

The true problem lies in content management and the saturation of information in this new digital frontier (more so the latter). I personally feel that we are hit with so much information every day, via our computers, cell phones, ipods or whatever, that we can’t hone in on concentrate on specifics anymore. In this new digital age the word rapidly changes, what’s great one week, is not the next. When we are constantly bombarded by information we get lost and confused and sometimes leads people to make mistakes and communicate inefficiently. When that happens things fall through the cracks and leads to things such as DMCA complaints. This can be seen in such situations as a remix that was sent out to promote a new single, but then gets so popular (through the blogs of course!) that the label decides to snatch it up and take it away only after they realized that it was a mistake to give it out for free in the first place (like the Alan Wilkis Remix of Shwayze’s track “Get you Home”). Rather than get to the root of the problem, the RIAA and the IFPI decide to slap you with a DMCA complaint which thus causes more confusion which then only makes the problem bigger. Maybe its laziness, or maybe its just that the industry doesn’t understand what the digital world is like today, but whatever it is it needs to change.

Here is a note to the industry: Don’t blame or punish the blogs, you guys  should be so happy that we exist becasue we do the promotion, marketing, campaigning for free which can only  lead to more profits for you. Sure, if you see that the new leaked Jay-Z track is on a blog, long before it’s officially released, I can understand, but for the little stuff, like the remixes of singles that are so abundant in this scene, just leave them alone and the blogs that host them. If you don’t embrace us and what we have in mind for this new generation of the music industry, then you will perish and have to live with the fact that some 26 year old with a computer and an email address destroyed one of the more powerful industries in the World.

Here is a note to the bloggers: The Big Wigs are afraid of what we have accomplished and what we will. They are running to the hills to regroup and plan a new course of attack, but we out number them. We have them down on their knees, now lets take them out for the count. We are the new Music Industry and hell of a lot more progressive than the current.

Oh, and if you are currently blogging with Blogger, get off it ASAP, WordPress is 1000000000x better

enjoY!

Picnic Kibun – Feather Weight Wait

UPDATE: Just got another DMCA Complaint of a track I posted in April ’09 — Silversun Pickups .. BULLSHIT

Thoughts?