Hundreds of Indian blogs disappear
By Sameer

Free WordPress blogging platform Blogetery.com was particularly popular in India.  Blogetery hosted more than 73,000 blogs of which many were set up by Indians. According to international internet traffic monitoring firm Alexa, Blogetery has a global rank of 7,620.  It drew as much as 32 percent of its global traffic from India followed by United States, Germany and Pakistan.

Alexa describes Blogetery as “a site particularly popular among users in the city of Ahmadabad (where it is ranked 580). The site's visitors view an average of 5.2 unique pages per day. While roughly 32% of the site's visitors are in India, where it is ranked at 1,334, it is also popular in the Philippines, where it is ranked 832. “

Now, the blogging group Blogetery has disappeared after legal action initiated in the USA.  It was not even given 24 hours to move the blogs on to a different computer.  The US judiciary served a legal notice and the hosting service shut it down without returning it to its rightful owners. And thousands of ordinary blogs have become collateral damage.

According to Torrentfreak “it appears that a free blogging platform has been taken down by its hosting provider on orders from the U.S. authorities on grounds of “a history of abuse”. More than 73,000 blogs are out of action as a result.”

On July 12, 2010, Blogetery received the following email from its hosting service BurstNET

“
Due to the history of abuse and on going abuse on this ‘bn.***********’ server.

We have opted to terminate this server, effective immediately. This termination applies to: bn.affiliateplex.com

Abuse Department
BurstNET Technologies, Inc
“

What is unfair is that many Indians on Blogetery had set up blogs with the only intention of communicating with friends and the outside world. These Indians blogs were not involved in any copyright violations.  But because of one legal order in USA, every Indian has lost his/her blog.

Only if bloggers and mainstream journalists bring this unfair loss of many legally run blogs on Blogetery to the public attention will the hosting service relent and restore the Indian blogs which were not involved in copyright infringement.  Why should innocents suffer because of the actions of others on any blogging platform?

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