Repeated TOS Violations Are Punished Gradually

Some blog owners don't understand the serious nature of repeated violation of TOS Policy, in Blogger blogs - and how offenses are handled, by Google.

We've seen several reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, from blog owners who appear to be unclear about the consequences of repeated TOS Violations.

I got email from Blogger, about my Blogger account.

We'd like to inform you that we've received another complaint regarding a blog that you administer. Upon review of your account, we've noted that you've repeatedly violated the Terms of Service: http://www.blogger.com/go/terms. Given that we've provided you with several warnings of these violations and advised you of our policy towards repeat infringers, we've been forced to disable your Blogger service.

How do I get my blog restored?

This example appears to represent the final step, in a multi step policy.

It appears that Google takes a multi step approach, towards repeated TOS violations - such as hosting of malware, porn, and / or spam - in Blogger blogs. This is similar to the DMCA Violations punishment process.

1. Unlike DMCA violations, individual posts are not deleted.
2. Deletion of offending blogs.
3. Deletion of offending Blogger account(s) (and blogs).

With a TOS initiated blog deletion, the blog owner is expected to have the blog reviewed. If the review determines the blog to be unrighteously deleted, the blog is restored - though there may be side effects.

If the blog owner does not wish to have the blog reviewed, he / she is allowed to start over, with a new blog - but will have to publish to a new URL. Content lost must be recovered by the owner - and the owner should be more careful with future blogs.

If the blog owner continue to publish blogs which violate TOS, any Blogger accounts involved, along with any other blogs owned by the deleted accounts, will be deleted.

We see that an appeal is possible.

Next steps for suspended accounts: If you believe your access to this product was suspended in error, contact us.

With any blogs published to a non BlogSpot domain, the domain URL(s) will remain in use, in the Google database - though the domain owner is free to use the domain outside Google address space. If the offender wishes to start over, both new BlogSpot and non BlogSpot URLs will be required.

As with other issues with email delivered warnings, there will be cases when the owner may not receive warnings in a timely fashion. Even so, the owner is responsible, when he / she offends, repeatedly.

Blogs under team ownership are apparently vulnerable to action taken against any team member. In some cases, blogs will simply disappear from the dashboards of the other team members, with no appeal or review request being possible.

It's possible that legal notice, provided by Google through email, will supercede ongoing forum advice - even if email sent is not received by the owner.

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