Reasons Why Google shut down Linda Ikeji's Blog.
Linda Ikeji
Google, on
Thursday, explained that it does not tolerate the violation of its Terms of
Service, which include intellectual property theft, but declined to
categorically say that was why it shut down popular Nigerian blog, Linda
Ikeji’s Blog.
The company said
it does not discuss individual accounts.
The company had
on Wednesday removed the blog from its Blogger platform days after an
intellectual property activist reported the site for copyright infringement.
The firm said
practices such as plagiarism diminish the experience of its users but said it
would not discuss individual accounts.
“Google is
dedicated to offering users the best possible experience across our products,”
said Kola-Ogunlade, the company’s communication and public affairs
manager for Anglophone West Africa when contacted over the deletion of the
popular blog.
“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.”
Linda Ikeji Blog
which was hosted by Blogger, a Google-owned blogging platform, was pulled down Wednesday following
allegations of plagiarism and intellectual property theft.
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 exclusive
interview with PREMIUM TIMES on Thursday, Mr. Dan’Iyan said he had emailed
Ms. Ikeji repeatedly about content 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.
Meanwhile Ms.
Ikeji is still working on re-launching her site, which by Thursday afternoon
was still shut down.
Late Wednesday night,
on Twitter, she posted to her over 400,000 followers, “Oh wow! Thanks guys for
all the love and support. I’m overwhelmed. Trying to get a new site…please bear
with me. Long live LIB. Kisses…”
In a previous
tweet following the shutdown, she had informed her followers that the blog was
still up on lindaikeji.mobi;
apparently, a stop-gap arrangement.
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