The furore over what began as a bitter Twitter exchange between a Nigerian whose identity is known simply as Mr Aye Dee and celebrated blogger, Linda Ikeji, reached its climax on Wednesday, October 8, 2014 when Google finally deleted the popular www.linda ikeji.blogspot.com.
The shut down of Nigeria’s leading blog followed complaints filed to Google by Mr Aye Dee, editor-in-chief of US-based 15Past8 media group according to his bio, against Linda Ikeji over copyright infringements.
And having tweeted: ‘Google just notified us that they are removing our copyrighted content from Linda Ikeji’s website. All the stories and images Linda Ikeji took from me without permission in the last few days have been removed from her site by Google. Someone has to say something. It costs money to get good work done. I spend time getting information from my sources, as well as analysing and verifying the information. All that costs money. I don’t mind donating my time for Nigeria’s sake, but for someone to take my labour and use it for personal profit, no way!’ days ago, the blog was finally shut down yesterday.
Responding to enquiries made by NET, Taiwo Kolade-Ogunlade, the search engine’s Communications and Public Affairs manager in Anglo-Phone West Africa, said issues of copyright infringements are seriously considered and swiftly dealt with by Google.
In a direct link he sent as part of his reply, Google makes it clear that ‘Blogger respects the rights of copyright holders and complies with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and other applicable copyright laws. When we receive proper notice as required by the DMCA, we will work to promptly remove content that has been identified as copyright infringement. Repeat infringers’ blogs are removed, and in appropriate instances Blogger accounts will be terminated.’
Going further, the statement points to Blogger’s copyright policy and Copyright Tips: ‘In general, any original work of authorship may be protected by copyright. Copyrighted materials may be subject to claims of copyright infringement. The most common reason we take down content from blogs for copyright infringement is that they have republished unauthorized copies of copyrighted content, and the owners of the copyrighted content have alerted us that their content is being used without their permission. Once we become aware of an unauthorized use, we will remove the content promptly.’
The company lists literary works including articles and passages of text, images and photographs, music files and MP3s, movies, movie trailers and videos among copyright materials, adding : ‘Anytime Blogger is properly notified that a blog or any part of a blog on our site infringes the copyrights of a third party, we will take it down from the site as required by law. If you believe that a blog infringes your copyright, please send us a copyright notice and we’ll take it down. If you believe we’ve removed content from your blog in error and that you are the copyright owner or have permission, you can file a counter notice and let us know. Accounts determined to be repeated infringers may be subject to termination.’
Finally the statement says: ‘Our current repeat infringer policy counts strikes by 24-hour periods. For example, if 5 blog posts were removed under the DMCA today, those removals would count as 1 strike. If 3 more posts were removed on the following day, those would count as 1 additional strike, totalling 2 strikes against that blogger’s account. Multiple strikes will be evaluated and may result in further remedial action, including deletion of the blog and/or terminating the account.’
This makes it clear what happened in the case of the deletion of Linda Ikeji’s blog which, however, seemingly made a brief return about an hour after it was first deleted yesterday before going down again.
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