Dennis Mangan's Blog is "Disappeared" by Google
Well-respected blogger Dennis Mangan woke up one day last week to discover his blog missing. What happened? The great and powerful Google deleted Dennis' blog. Why? No one knows -- and Google isn't saying. More from Steve Sailer.
Anyone who maintains a Google blog (including blogspot and blogger), needs to understand how vague and inappropriate Google's terms of service are, regarding how, why, when, and where it may choose to delete a blogger's intellectual property.
Here are some ways for backing up a blogspot blog, suggested by Steve Sailer's commenters:
OneStdv:
Ferdinand Bardamu:
Anonymous:
A link to a zip file containing Dennis Mangan's blog was posted to HalfSigma's comments:
http://98.192.200.202/mangans.zip
Any other information on preventing blog deletions or retrieving deleted blogs would be appreciated.
More: In Mala Fide has more information
This is not something that Google should be allowed to do without paying a significant price.
Anyone who maintains a Google blog (including blogspot and blogger), needs to understand how vague and inappropriate Google's terms of service are, regarding how, why, when, and where it may choose to delete a blogger's intellectual property.
Here are some ways for backing up a blogspot blog, suggested by Steve Sailer's commenters:
OneStdv:
Here's a very easy to back up your blog:
Copy this (change blogname):
http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?max-results=1000
I think it can go over 1000, so try it. Then just Select All and copy into a Word document (it will then contain all links and pics).
That's what I just did.
Ferdinand Bardamu:
Blogger has an option to export your blog as an XML file for safekeeping:
http://bloggerindraft.blogspot.com/2008/06/new-feature-import-and-export.html
Anonymous:
I just downloaded steve's blog as 4700+ html pages:
0. Use firefox with free DownThemAll extension installed.
1. Go to page http://isteve.blogspot.com/search?max-results=10000
(this might take a while to render, depending on how much RAM you have)
2. Choose "DownThemAll..." from the tools menu in firefox.
3. A window should come up with a list of links in it (make sure to choose "Links" in the top left, instead of "Pictures and Embedded" in the top middle).
4. Create a directory to save your files in.
5. Uncheck all the checkboxes.
6. Type the following in the fast filtering area:
*isteve.blogspot.com/20*
7. Click Start.
8. After a while you'll get an error message about duplicate files -- choose to ignore/skip all such for "this session".
End result:
4720 File(s)
1,164,915,036 bytes
There were about thirty 404'ed links; possibly typoes by steve, or renamed/deleted pages.
A link to a zip file containing Dennis Mangan's blog was posted to HalfSigma's comments:
http://98.192.200.202/mangans.zip
Any other information on preventing blog deletions or retrieving deleted blogs would be appreciated.
More: In Mala Fide has more information
This is not something that Google should be allowed to do without paying a significant price.
Labels: a blog's life
posted by al fin at 12:27 pm
10 Comments:
I had my family blog locked down three times in one month due to someone 'flagging' it to report abuse. But all that was on it was photos of my infant premature son and updates on his status while he was in the hospital. It took over a week for google to get my blog going again. I suspect an ex's girlfriend reported it because she is a nasty piece of work but I have no proof and google NEVER told me a reason for the deactivation, even after they reactivated me. Then it was shut down 2 more times again with no explanation.
Perhaps they will do the same for this blogger - ie after they check it out his blog will magically appear again. But it is hard to say. I never received an explanation at all for my blog closures even though I wrote them several times and was very upset about it.
Yes, a few of my other blogs have been temporarily made inaccessible to me due to being flagged as "spam" blogs. They were all returned to service within a day or two after I responded to the blockage.
This is different, though. Google completely deleted Dennis' entire blog from the web. In one majestic push of the button, HRM Google destroyed one individual's intellectual property of several years. In the Al Fin universe, that amounts to a criminal offense.
Google would do well to restore Dennis' blog -- or provide him an XML file to export the entire blog to another host.
Yes I clicked his link and saw that it has been removed and the blog name is not available for anyone else to use. Hmmmm you better save all your files because I read your blog almost every day and enjoy your postings and I would hate to come in one day and find you disappeared magically off the face of the blogger planet ;)
I set mine up to email each post as I write it so I at least have copies that way.
Thanks, KC.
The email backup is a good idea.
Thanks for the shoutout.
Keeping backups in XML format is something that every blogger should be doing. I update my own records once a week to be safe. The big benefit of XML files is that you can import them into just about any blogging platform - Blogger, Wordpress (.com and .org), Typepad - and continue blogging where you left off.
Thanks for letting us know what the heck was going on. I found Blogspot's message in place of Mangan's site last night but tried to hope it was just a temporary screw-up. I had a bad bad feeling, though, and went ahead and linked up the Wayback archive earlier today. It's here --
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://mangans.blogspot.com
-- but only the stuff through mid-2007 shows up thus far.
Doggone it, I was just starting to get a real feel for that blog.
This is truly frightening. My blog used to be on wordpress.com and we would do backups daily to ensure that in the event that anything happened, we had all our posts, pictures and comments safely stored. I knew a woman who had a business blog on Wordpress and got locked out of her block because one of her readers reported her. From what I recall, Wordpress actually deleted her blog. That's a big reason why we switched over to our own hosting. You have more control that way.
preparednesspro.com
Have anyone contemplated the possibility that this is the work of some black hats?
Someone log in the Mangan's Google Account and delete it.
BTW, I found this utility:
http://bloggerbackup.codeplex.com/
The Blogger Backup utility is intended to be a simple utility to backup to local disk your Blogger posts.
Tested, it work neatly. Open Source and free.
Thanks for the info, EP.
You are right that hackers could have deleted Dennis' blog as easily as Google.
Until Google provides their side of the story we won't know.
Post a Comment
“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act” _George Orwell
<< Home