Google has shut down several popular new music blogs without warning, deleting years of archived posts and content in the process.

The sites, including well-established blogs such as 'Pop Tarts' and ‘To die by your side’ were part of Google’s Blogger and Blogspot services and were apparently shut down due to violation of terms in hosting mp3s and other artist content.

This is an obvious contradiction of widespread music company and PR practice of courting bloggers in the same way that traditional media are engaged by sending out promotional copies of tracks and video virals, encouraging bloggers to share the content with their followers.

This move is seemingly based on the take down stipulations of the American Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and could be perceived as a pre-emptive move by Google  to avoid liability in future cases of copyright infringement.

All of the bloggers concerned apparently received a notice stating: "Upon review of your account, we've noted that your blog has repeatedly violated Blogger's Terms of Service. We've been forced to remove your blog”.

Under revised terms that came into play in the Summer of 2009, Google's services state that all blog posts containing such content will be set to a ‘draft’ status and not publicly viewable online. Following this, the blog author should be notified of this claim.

Of course, all self-published articles will remain the intellectual property of the blogger, meaning that content could potentially be re-established on a different online platform to a Google owned site.

Bill Lipold, publisher of the blog ‘I Rock Cleveland’, which was included in the cull has spoken out publicly against the sensibility behind such actions.

Speaking to ‘The Plain Dealer’ newspaper, Lipold said: “They don't see the distinction between someone who's adding value and someone who's facilitating piracy. That goes to the root of this whole mess”.

Despite the crackdown, several high profile music blog sites hosted by blogger, such as ‘Gorilla vs Bear’ are still online, meaning that the exact criteria of selection for shutting the blogs down remains unclear.

Have your say! Are Google simply covering their backs against potential legal action? Is the move justified even if the blogs were essentially hosting authorised material sent to them by representatives of artists? Should some kind of validation scheme exist to distinguish such blogs from sites that illegitimately leak entire albums in advance for example? Is your favourite music blog still online?