Last week the blogosphere erupted over the banning of ShoeMoney from the MyBlogLog service.  You can read the basics of what happened here.  Well… I thought it was all over and done with.  But I guess I was wrong.  And I guess enough people made enough noise to cause MBL to change their mind about the whole thing.  But not only did they change their mind, they also issued an apology and have turned ShoeMoney into a MBL celebrity on their site.

 

I'm keeping my personal feelings on the whole thing to myself this go around.  But I think you could easily figure them out after reading the previous post on the issue.  That being said, I would like to request a little clarification from MBL on exactly what this whole thing means for their service.

 

We now know that popular bloggers can do whatever they want and not only get away with it, but also be made into MBL celebrities. We know that MBL will "look the other way" when someone like ShoeMoney violates the company's terms of service.  But where does that leave smaller blogs like The Internet Marketing Monitor?

 

MyBlogLog has no terms of service of its own.  Instead, there's a link to Yahoo's terms of service in the footer area of the site (Yahoo is the parent company of MBL).  I don't think the Yahoo TOS were there before this all happened, though.  At any rate, according to those TOS, users of all Yahoo services are bound to the following terms (emphasis is mine).

 

Users may not: 

• upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any Content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable;
• impersonate any person or entity, including, but not limited to, a Yahoo! official, forum leader, guide or host, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity;
• collect or store personal data about other users in connection with the prohibited conduct and activities set forth in paragraphs a through m above;

In addition:

• You acknowledge, consent and agree that Yahoo! may access, preserve and disclose your account information and Content if required to do so by law […]
• You understand that the Service and software embodied within the Service may include security components that permit digital materials to be protected, and that use of these materials is subject to usage rules set by Yahoo! and/or content providers who provide content to the Service. You may not attempt to override or circumvent any of the usage rules embedded into the Service.
• You agree that Yahoo! may, under certain circumstances and without prior notice, immediately terminate your Yahoo! account, any associated email address, and access to the Service.  Further, you agree that all terminations for cause shall be made in Yahoo!'s sole discretion […]

Maybe these don't all apply to the recent fiasco.  But you get the idea.  So if users of MyBlogLog's service are bound to these terms of service… what happened here?  And how do smaller, less popular blogs know how far they can go before they're found in violation of those terms?

 

The company's co-founder had this to say about the initial decision to place the ban in question: 

To be clear — we did not ban shoemoney for posting about exploits. Although we would certainly have appreciated that he email us first, it’s his decision where he would like to publish them. We banned him for publishing other people’s data on the site and urging readers to spoof them. On what planet is that not a bannable offense?

So needless to say, the recent decision to reverse the ban is nothing if not confusing.  Well… it's something more than that.  But like I said before, personal feelings aside, it's just plain confusing.  I'm more lost now about what's acceptable and what's not than before any of this happened.  The Internet Marketing Monitor is no ShoeMoney… so the same rules that apply over there don't apply here (I assume).

We're not the only ones who are confused by all of this, either: