Beating a Dead Horse:
On Still Blogging as a Subversive Activity
Okay, now I’m pissed. And if you want Cover Lay Down to continue, I’m asking for YOUR help. Here’s the deal:
In the last hour, blogger has removed two more posts from this blog.
One of these was the post I put up just this past weekend.
The blogger take-down comes just hours after I received a very nice thank you from the label rep who arranged for me to have those songs available for all of you.
Let me say that again, just to make sure you get it. Here’s what happened, in order:
- Label rep contacts me about awesome new covers.
- I write to label rep thanking her and asking for permission to share those covers.
- Label rep excitedly grants permission to share those covers in a particular way.
- I post those covers in exactly the way specified by the label rep.
- In the same post, I include two other covers which are all over the blogs, and available for FREE on the MySpace page of the artist, who owns her OWN label.
- The label rep writes to thank me for the nice review.
- Blogger takes down the post.
Other than making sure that the entire bloggiverse understands that at no time - not once, in all of this mess over the past few weeks — has blogger EVER contacted me about taking down posts, even to let me know that the posts have gone down, I’m pretty much at a loss for words. And those who visit Cover Lay Down regularly know, that’s really saying something.
I wish I had the heart and the focus to rant a bit right now, but I’m not averse to giving others who have come before me the credit for speaking to my heart. And Any Major Dude with Half A Heart describes my own feelings to a T, I think: defiant but cautious, and, more significantly, exhausted enough by the prospect of this as a way of life that I’m seriously considering compromising how I blog. Here’s what he has to say; it goes double for me, too:
I have pledged to continue blogging. I might change platforms – perhaps finding a host in a country where US copyright laws do not have force – or try to double-guess what Blogger will and will not zap. At the same time, I’m feeling a sense of blogging burnout and diminished time. If the rate of my updates decreases, then it will not because I have submitted to The Man, but because I am facing new challenges. Apart from the job which pays me my monthly salary and being engaged in an NGO I helped found*, I have taken on the editorship of a book project, revising another book, and plan to write one myself. And my family would like to remember my face as well. Which means I will not devote as much time to this labour of love as I have previously. But I won’t go.
To me, this is the real blow. Most of us blog with all our heart, and all the time we can give. To suddenly be faced with having to put in a huge amount of work to restart elsewhere is time-consuming, and that time has to come from somewhere, and all I’ve got left to give is the time I have to write this.
The problem is, unlike AMD, I don’t think I have the heart to do this by halves. And right now, it would take a superhuman amount of work and love and energy just to save this place from its looming condemnation.
I’d like to pledge to continue, and have the time to consider options. But unlike Any Major Dude, my host has already notified me that they’re giving me the boot. Clearly, I’m not on the same wavelength as blogger, but even if I thought I could second-guess blogger successfully, I don’t have the luxury of trying. And so, I have thirteen days — no more or less — to find, and fully implement, a solution, lest we become a blog frozen in time, another flying dutchman lost to the ether.
And let’s be honest, folks. I just can’t do it on my own.
I’m writing midterms for my classes, and about to have to grade them; if I want to keep my day job, I need to spend the next two weeks grading papers and crunching grades for my kids, not spending every waking hour rebuilding this blog on a new platform. My kids miss me, too. It’s going to snow any day now, and the wood isn’t stacked, the yard isn’t raked, and I spend every waking hour either at work or cursing this damn computer, and all the stress it is bringing me. I turned to blogging as a vocational hobby, a true amateur’s pursuit, and now it’s just making me tired, mad, and worn out.
I thought about just writing this as a final post, and letting go. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that heart can be borrowed. After all, I’ve lent my own out, when it was warranted. I believe in social media, and this is why:
I could do this if I had patronage.
If someone was willing to step forward to do the bulk of the transfer, making a clean swap of archives and content from blogger to a private domain, maybe help out with the redesign. If some of you were willing to give, maybe just a few bucks each, to the financial cause, via that everpresent and hardly used donate button there on the sidebar, since self-hosting in the way that seems most secure is about ten times more expensive than the model I’ve been using.
What I can offer is love and time, the same as it ever was, and I don’t think that’s nothing.
It’s just that, right now, it clearly isn’t enough.
Look, I love this place. I’ve got music poised to post, more new artists to tout, streamable and ready, with labels waiting for me to give them the nod. But as the deadline for my host gets closer, all I can do is feel the weight of it pushing down on me. It’s time to come forward, and state unequivocally, that I just can’t do this right now.
If it turns out that there isn’t really a bunch of people out there willing to help out, then I’ll crawl back into my hole, and call it a good run. I’ll be sad, for a while. The music world will be that much more commercialized and commodified. We’ll all lose, just a little bit more. And then we’ll move on, and forget, as we always do, and live in that grey world.
But I’m hoping that there are a few folks out there who appreciate what I’ve tried to bring here just enough to want to help out.
UPDATE 11:11 pm: Several folks have written to ask if there are other ways to help, especially for those with no e-cash solution or hosting to offer. The short answer to this question: absolutely. See the comments below for a few more thoughts on the matter.
Category: metablog
November 3rd, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Hey Boyhowdy,
I wish I could offer you financial help, but how about a couple of pieces of advice that may help you out of this jam.
One - switch to an affordable hosting service. Bluehost, my hosting service, is pretty affordable and has not given me any hassle.
Two - switch to Wordpress on a self-hosted site. They allow for a direct import of all your posts from Blogger, so you won’t lose your archives.
Three - get some adverts. BlogHer is very good and if you have a demonstrable female audience and the traffic that I suspect that you do, they’ll snap you up. I’m making enough to pay my hosting costs and more right now.
Shoot me an e-mail (chris[at]afreeman[dot]org), I’d be happy to help you out with the transfer if you’re inclined to go this way.
Best,
Chris
November 3rd, 2008 at 6:59 pm
Thanks, Chris. No worries about not donating — advice and fellowship is part of the process, too, and I appreciate the rapid response.
I am indeed looking at wordpress, but I don’t know much about it - didn’t know that it allowed wholesale archive imports from blogger, which would make a BIG difference, so thanks much for that tip.
As for hosting: at last gasp, I was tracking about two TERABYTES of bandwidth a month. I’ve been told this will probably not fly at most mass market hosting solutions for files, but I’ll clearly need a separate host for the blog itself, and am willing to consider all comers.
I’d rather not advertise, if I don’t have to; I understand and do not begrudge others going that way, but I’m holding out on that as long as I can. But maybe I’ll have to. Still, every little bit from here will help.
November 3rd, 2008 at 7:03 pm
My cheers for the post. I am a fan of your blog and a good handful more favorite blogs that bring out the musically-good stuff to share, at least a small bit, to the world.
Don’t back down in the fight.
Cheers.
November 3rd, 2008 at 7:05 pm
I made a donation & would be glad to help with the job of moving your files or whatever. Have never published a blog myself yet - so I'm no expert. But I'd be glad to help any way I can so you can "stay in business" - just give a holler.
pilk00@comcast.net
November 3rd, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Blogger just started taking down my posts as well. It’s a scary time for bloggers, and I wish had the technical know-how to help you, but as it is I may soon find myself in the same boat. I hope the best for us both.
November 3rd, 2008 at 10:56 pm
Hello hello - I don’t have a PayPal and am not able to sign up for one (for various reason), but I would like to contribute however I can. Any advice for those who are loyal readers, but don’t have a private domain to offer or e-money to wing your way?
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:09 pm
@ anonymous: A fair question, and one I addressed a bit earlier this evening in response to a similar query that came by email. Here’s what I sent along, with apologies to Fiona for cribbing from our email exchange:
“…a few things you can do:
1. Keep visiting, both my blog and others, and comment often. Keeping bloggers’ hearts in it makes it worth digging into our own pocketbooks when we have to, and keeps us happy about the stress of time and effort spent posting, if we know you’re listening.
2. Validate the point of the blog by buying music and seeing shows when you can, if you like what we post — and, when you do, tell the artists, and say that in the comments, too. After all, we claim to do this for the artists; show them (and their labels and representatives) that the model works, and they’ll keep sending along music for us to share with you.
3. In more immediate terms: if you know any artists, ask them to donate or send along cover songs, because postable material is as good as gold.
4. If you’re an american citizen, tomorrow, when you go to the polls, vote for the candidate which you feel best supports net neutrality and fair use. Oddly, right now, this is a toss-up between the major pres. candidates, but senators are not all on the same page.
5. Also, in more immediate terms: feel free to contact the Electronic Frontier Foundation, your senator, the labels, and anyone else you can think of who has the ability to a/effect this issue and complain that a) this is a fair use issue gone rampantly silly, and b) this is affecting your ability to choose which music to BUY. There’s more about this in my previous posts, I think.
6. Walk the walk. Buy local, eschew the huge megastores, and work with your daily listening and buying habits to strengthen the little, social media models and those who work with them. After all, we’re all in this together.
Thanks for listening, and thanks, too, to each of you who makes the commitment to contribute in whatever way works best for you, whether that is with pocketbook, skill, social change agency, or good cheer. Know that all of it is heartwarming, and greatly appreciated. Keep your fingers crossed for us, too. Hope you can come back soon, wherever Cover Lay Down might land.
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Just chipped in a bit. I really hope you’re able to continue with the site. I’m planning a blog for next year where I envision hosting some (legal) music and this just fills me with dread. Fight the good fight.
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:36 pm
For hosting your archive, you may want to take a look at one of Dreamhost’s unlimited storage and bandwidth plans (http://dreamhost.com/). These plans are really much cheaper than almost all of the competition, and there is a very simple reason why they can afford to do that: Dreamhost doesn’t offer all of the guaranteed uptime that other hosts do.
A good analogy might be that this kind of hosting is to web servers what a barber school is to grooming; as long as you know what you’re getting, it might make perfect sense to get your hair cut by students.
If you could find a decent bargain-basement host for your archives and a reliable host for the current material, you might be able to make this more affordable.
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:39 pm
You’ve got lots of fans wishing you good luck. Thanks for all you’ve done so far.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:51 am
Hi,
I moved over to Wordpress on my own host from blogger about a month ago, I believe it was the best thing I could have done for my blog. Not only am I out from under the control of the faceless machine, but user-friendliness and SEO are handled WAY better in Wordpress.
I received a take town notice on my blogspot blog that is still up as well, fortunately I had already moved.
Moving to Wordpress is really quite easy. Their Import functionality works very well.
The real work is in choosing a theme and figuring out how the admin interface, neither of which is very difficult.
I’ve enjoyed you blog for a while and would hate to see you discontinue. If you have any questions about moving to Wordpress, I’d be happy to help.
Email: road.two.nowhere@gmail.com
Good luck!
November 4th, 2008 at 2:13 am
I understand very little tech yada yada - and, it may be that Wordpress is your best solution. If so, I can be of zero help. However, I see Dreamhost has been suggested, and, it is true - they offer huge amounts of disk space and bandwidth.
We have just recently moved our domain from Dreamhost (after 4-5 years with them as host) - because they’ve stopped supporting FrontPage extensions. (Yes, an old editing program that even Microsoft no longer supports - but, it’s the only way I know how to edit, so, until I have time to learn new tricks, I need it!)
The result of this is that we have an account pre-paid for the next 9 or 10 months at Dreamhost, and, should it be technically feasible, you are certainly welcome to make use of this space - as we are being hosted on a different server (one with FrontPage extensions enabled).
Should it help, and can be used, it’s yours.
cheers, Ad
November 4th, 2008 at 3:53 am
Has it been established that blogs on Wordpress haven´t been hassled so far? If so, I´ll move over from Blogger right away. Another post gone this morning… Anyone?
November 4th, 2008 at 7:30 am
I run a self-hosted Wordpress blog and am a Dreamhost customer, but the one thing I will warn you about is that it’s in their terms and conditions that if you breach someone’s copyright they can remove your hosting. But it doesn’t sound like that’s the sort of problem you might run into as you’re not ripping anybody off and usually posting files you have express permission to use (surely the heart of why this whole Bloggergate thing is absolutely ridiculous).
I hope to donate and post something on this issue myself later.
November 4th, 2008 at 9:01 am
I know this may not be helpful .. but screw the music, just keep writing. As I’ve said to a few bloggers this last week, I would hate to see you disappear, your writing is enjoyable to read, the music posts are secondary. I can promise you that I may lurk but I will always be reading.
November 4th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Btw: have you contacted the label rep in question about this? I wonder what his/her reaction was…
November 4th, 2008 at 11:47 am
Two things: First of all, it’s illegal for someone to randomly serve DMCA notices. They can get sued. All you need to do is to respond to Blogger saying that the notice was served in error, and they should put your page back up.
Second, I would suggest, in the future, blogging your main article as a post, then blog each tune (or tune set by the same artist) in an individual subsequent post. This would (a) ensure that only the “offending” post was eliminated and (b) help identify what knothole was spamming the bloglines with take down notices.
Just some ideas.
But you really should contact Blogger and let them know that the takedown was served in error. See what they do.
Peter
November 4th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Hey, Boy ~
Being a self-admitted technoweenie, I lost you at bandwidth…
- however, I am more than glad to help in other ways you suggested: I will continue to read, enjoy and comment on your blog, reiterating it's as much about your words as it is the music (literate *and* lyrical) for me; I will continue to go to shows and buy CDs and spread the word about artists I appreciate; you can *bet* I'll be voting today; and, despite my recent lay-off, I'm also making a donation because I *know* you write from your heart, a precarious yet positive stance in what feels to be an ever-more-dangerous-crazy-and-cold world…
Finally, I'll light a purple candle, with intentions that this situation resolves in the most efficient (time-, energy- and money-wise) manner possible - thanks for *everything* you do… <3
November 4th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
This is truly ridiculous. Even though I have not had any posts deleted (yet) I feel angry just reading what has been happening to you, Fong, Ray and others.
When you first started blogging I let you know that I have a sister-in-law in the hosting biz and would be happy connect the two of you to find a solution that would fit the best for you.
AC@45 said it best a few comments up. Keep writing. The content of your posts is superb and will keep people coming back even if you don’t have any music.
I may have another idea that allows you to stay where you are but I have to look into it a bit further.
Take care.
kurtis
November 4th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
1. I got a sweet deal at Dreamhost a few months ago, unlimited bandwith and unlimited storage for $119 a year, …yes, you read that right.
2. *any* host will yank your service for copyright infringement but *most* if not all will give you a warning or two first.
3. wordpress.org is different from wordpress.com. and hosting your blog yourself and using wordpress.org is, as far as I can tell, a little “safer” …. but notice the the quote marks there, lol
4. yes wordpress will import your blog and all your comments exactly from blogger … i just did it myself, it’s easy. and looking at your template it would seem that you could find a wordpress theme that would be very similar. you do have to do quite a bit of set up to host your blog yourself, but it took me about 5 hours to figure it out — i’m not a tech genius by any stretch of the imagination. i read directions, i followed them, i sought help in tech forums.
5. i just went through all this over the weekend. seriously, hit me up for advice/help, atartytart (at) gmail (dot) com
xoxo,
Tart
November 6th, 2008 at 10:34 am
One data point about Dreamhost - about 2 years ago, a good friend had given me and several others directories on her account with them. They determined that she was sharing several .avi files of commercial movies among friends and took down her whole site without warning or recourse. We all lost everything.
November 6th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
I realize that mp3s probably play a big role in your traffic stats, but as a regular reader of your blog I really wouldn’t mind if you wrote without posting mp3s. Honestly, there are so many blogs that offer mp3s without original content that the reason I love Cover Lay Down is because you ramble on so much!
So please keep writing about music (or anything else) even if you can’t post mp3s for a while.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
I have been following your saga and those of others that I read regularly. Please hang in there and keep writing. Took your advise and contacted label and distribution folks that I still know from previously being in the industry. No one seems to know who’s filing or why, or at least claims as such. While I don’t post MP3’s on my blog, I want to reserve the right to do so, for all of us. I may have to look at a move myself. Solidarity. RG
November 7th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Thanks for the mention.
After a few days-flurry of deletions, it suddenly stopped. The deletions were definitely random (I made the example of the Brandi Carlile track that was DMCAed from my dormant blog, but the post on Any Major Dude WHAH linking to the same track was unaffected). It’s all rather odd, and I’m leaning towards the lone cowboy theory. If so, all the more shame on Blogger, whose actions have been utterly deplorable.
Anyway, I hope the anger and discouragement is wearing off.
November 7th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
A quick thanks, with many more to follow, for all the wonderful support, folks.
My cup runneth over with comment-love and gifts, the tech support is in place (though expense-defraying donations are still gratefully accepted), and I’m happy to report that a solution is in the works. Stay tuned…
November 8th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Have you considered dropping the MP3 files on SendIt, or some such service that will deliver large files?
s
November 13th, 2008 at 11:48 am
If a kind reader would donate time/internet savvy, couldn’t you transfer everything to WordPress pretty smoothly?
I know they’re pretty adamant about each blog being your intellectual property– I think the worst case would be a label rep contacting you in person, rather than your work disappearing into a void.
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