Pages

Friday 10 October 2014

Google Restores Linda Ikeji’s Blog After 24 hours



Popular gossip blogger, Linda Ikeji early this morning around midnight friday, (12:05am) got her blog restored back by google. The embattled popular Nigerian blogger announced the news on twitter. The blogger who blogs at www.lindaikeji.blogspot.com was shut down by Google for 24 hours due to a claim about alleged plagiarism/copyright infringement by a cybersquatter with the twitter handle ‘AyeDee.’ Prior to its shutdown, 

I hear it’s a record. Normally it takes weeks or months to restore a deleted blog. But not LIB,” she tweeted six minutes after midnight.

In a follow up tweets, she explained that Google had restored the blog after verifying that the allegations of plagiarism were “bogus and deliberate sabotage.”
On Thursday night, a few hours before announcing the restoration of her blogger site, Ms. Ikeji had directed readers to her new site, lindaikejionline.com.
The blog was shut down on Wednesday.

On Thursday, Taiwo Kola-Ogunlade,  Google’s communication and public affairs manager for Anglophone West Africa had declined to categorically say  why  it shut down the blog.
Mr. Kola-Ogunlade said the company  does not discuss individual accounts.
However, speaking generally, he said: “We take violations of policies very seriously as such activities diminish the experience for our users. When we are notified of the existence of content that may violate our Terms of Service, we act quickly to review it and determine whether it actually violates our policies. If we determine that it does, we remove it immediately.”
In a tweet following the blog’s shutdown, Ms. Ikeji had informed her followers that it was still up on lindaikeji.mobi; apparently, a stop-gap arrangement, and that she was working to get a new one.
She also alleged that cybersquatters had acquired all her potential domain names.
On Tuesday, in a blog post, Ms. Ikeji accused “cybersquatters and hackers” of trying to bring her blog down.
She pointed a finger directly at Mukhtar Dan’Iyan, the Editor-in-Chief of US-based The 15 Past Eight Media Group, who uses the handle @AyeDee on Twitter.
Ms. Ikeji said Mr. Dan’Iyan was equally guilty of what he accused her of -lifting articles from other websites without permission, and alleged that he owned the domain name lindaikeji.net under an alias, Emmanuel Efremov.
In an interview with premium times on Thursday, Mr. Dan’Iyan said he had emailed Ms. Ikeji repeatedly about contents she lifted from his site before filing a formal DMCA complaint to Google.
A Digital Copyright Millenium Act, DMCA, is an avenue to report content that you would like removed from Google’s services under applicable laws.
According to Mr. Dan’Iyan, Ms. Ikeji had used over 10,000 copyrighted pictures and stories over the past five years without the authorisation of the copyright owners.
He also said “Emmanuel Efremov” was one of the directors in his company.
“Emmanuel has never tried to sell anything to Linda, nor has he ever demanded any sort of money from her. In fact, I doubt he’s ever had any interaction with here even in passing,” Mr. Dan’Iyan said.

No comments:

Post a Comment