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Google deletes artist’s blog, a decade of his work

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Re: Google deletes artist’s blog, a decade of his work

#211

Post by ekidd »

corobo wrote: post #197
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you qualify what "2 different forms of media" means? I'm assuming one physical, one cloud. Do you consider two separate external HDD's with the data on it to fail that test because they are the same form? When my music collection was smaller, I had everything backed up onto an external as well as had them all physically burned onto like 50 DVDs. Since my collection has grown beyond a terabyte, however, I haven't…

A few examples I can pull off the top of my head - DVD, Disk (HDD), Disk (SSD), Disk (Flash.. maybe?), Tape, Cloud So Disk (HDD) and Cloud is fine. Two HDDs (spinny platter style) would indeed fail the test. If you want to argue it you could probably get away with different manufacturers or different batches but I'd prefer my backups to play nicely with the rules rather than try to avoid them! Far-fetched as it is bu…

One nice thing about the "2 different forms of media" rule is that it would protect you against bad batches of hard drives.

Sometimes, when people buy multiple drives at once for servers, they wind up with drives from the same batch. If the drives are subtly defective, and if they're always run under identical conditions (such as in a RAID array), then I've seen multiple drives fail within days of each other.

Re: Google deletes artist’s blog, a decade of his work

#212

Post by wtetzner »

daveloyall wrote: post #166
Arnt wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cite RFC?

Back when I set up a client to pull from Gmail it would break twice a year: when the changed their TLS cert, and when the later changed it BACK. My conclusion at the time was that they wanted to keep the percentage of users of the IMAP service below some value, and every time the jerked the config around, they'd see a dip in the graph on their end. My setup is currently non-functional. The maintenance cost was too hi…

Why did changing the TLS cert break things? Were you pinning it in your client?

Re: Google deletes artist’s blog, a decade of his work

#213

Post by kennywinker »

modeless wrote: post #196

From Reddit: "I've read a few of Cooper's books and the short answer is yes, pedophilia is a common theme in his writing (as is incest and necrophilia)." [1] I'm calling it now. It was child porn. Google doesn't like to go around deleting people's stuff. When this has happened in the past it's been child porn, which Google is obligated by governments everywhere to delete with extreme prejudice. And of course they're…

It's still problematic, even if the work was distasteful or even illegal. There was no process involved, no chance for appeal, no explanation of the charges that precipitated it. If it truly is illegal materials that violate laws, then deleting it is deleting evidence and helping cover up crimes. If it was art that borders on distasteful to some then google is deciding taste and public values with private algorithms.

I'm not sure what the right thing is here. To require any publishing platform to retain works they decide violates their TOS seems like a big burden. But we live in a world where publishing seemingly requires the cooperation the private sector. If not google, at very least a hosting company of some kind. If we want the allow social norms to change we can't stifle everything that falls outside of the norm.

Re: Google deletes artist’s blog, a decade of his work

#214

Post by creeble »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #82

Everyone should occasionally use Google Takeout to back up their stuff, but non-tech users don't understand this. I use my own domain and private email service but I do run my blog on blogger. But, I have done the experiment of converting Google Takeout data for my blog and hosting it on my own server. My default is to use blogger because I like how comments are handled. Services that Google and Facebook provide can…

omg, takeout. Been using various scripts for years (and should keep testing them I guess [1]).

I have "Feature announcements" on from Google, but never heard of this. Anyway, thanks mucho!

[1] http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/cautionary-tale-google-decides-...

Re: Google deletes artist’s blog, a decade of his work

#215

Post by 6stringmerc »

modeless wrote: post #196

From Reddit: "I've read a few of Cooper's books and the short answer is yes, pedophilia is a common theme in his writing (as is incest and necrophilia)." [1] I'm calling it now. It was child porn. Google doesn't like to go around deleting people's stuff. When this has happened in the past it's been child porn, which Google is obligated by governments everywhere to delete with extreme prejudice. And of course they're…

And, for as odd as it might sound, there are routine stories about run-of-the-mill criminals calling law enforcement to report their criminal behavior was the victim of somebody else's criminal behavior[1] to keep as a reference point.

[1] http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ohio-coke-head-call...

Sounds like mostly a TOS violation type thing though, which, if he sues, we'll delve a little deeper into I suppose.

Re: Google deletes artist’s blog, a decade of his work

#216

Post by leephillips »

daveloyall wrote: post #166
Arnt wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cite RFC?

Back when I set up a client to pull from Gmail it would break twice a year: when the changed their TLS cert, and when the later changed it BACK. My conclusion at the time was that they wanted to keep the percentage of users of the IMAP service below some value, and every time the jerked the config around, they'd see a dip in the graph on their end. My setup is currently non-functional. The maintenance cost was too hi…

In addition, what Google claims is an "SMTP server" does surprising things in violation of the relevant RFCs, in furtherance of Google's business models:

http://lee-phillips.org/gmailRewriting/

Re: Google deletes artist’s blog, a decade of his work

#217

Post by erikb »

janekm wrote: post #134

The fact that every single comment in this thread amounts to "should have backed up" makes me a little sad. Is this really what we want to expect from companies like Google? Is this acceptable? Is it just a "force of nature" that I should consider beyond the ken of man? What happened here is the abrogation of human responsibility onto algorithms, TOS, with no apparent human oversight. A very disturbing trend, and I t…

No it's not, but not backing up the majority of your work some way or another is really really bad practice. Worse than google losing one of trillions of datasets.

Re: Google deletes artist’s blog, a decade of his work

#218

Post by sliverstorm »

andrewclunn wrote: post #202
modeless wrote: post #196

From Reddit: "I've read a few of Cooper's books and the short answer is yes, pedophilia is a common theme in his writing (as is incest and necrophilia)." [1] I'm calling it now. It was child porn. Google doesn't like to go around deleting people's stuff. When this has happened in the past it's been child porn, which Google is obligated by governments everywhere to delete with extreme prejudice. And of course they're…

Which would also explain why he wouldn't have local back-ups, to avoid prosecution. Though this may be something of a case of, "Innocent until algorithms say otherwise."

Considering how few people actually take backups, I'm willing to assume laziness.

You wouldn't believe how many people I know who say things like, "Yeah I'd lose my entire PhD project if this laptop died, because I haven't taken a backup in X years" (and proceed to continue not backing up their work)

Re: Google deletes artist’s blog, a decade of his work

#219

Post by Dylan16807 »

DINKDINK wrote: post #200
wpietri wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely. My dad, a now-retired programmer, was dealing with an error at his bank in the 80s. It was a bunch of work and frustration. At some point he asked why a thing happened and the rep said, "Oh, the computer just does that." He didn't say anything to her, but he was still mad when he talked about at dinner that night. "Computers don't just do things! People make computers do things. Every thing a computer doe…

>"Computers don't just do things! People make computers do things. Every thing a computer does is something humans are responsible for." I think the angle your father was coming at this was, computers are deterministic. There are lots of times when computers don't act deterministicly, flipped bits for one, also edge cases like Race Conditions etc

Flipped bits don't follow any pattern where you can say "oh it does that". Race conditions are the responsibility of the programmers just like anything else programmed in.

Re: Google deletes artist’s blog, a decade of his work

#220

Post by parineum »

kennywinker wrote: post #213
modeless wrote: post #196

From Reddit: "I've read a few of Cooper's books and the short answer is yes, pedophilia is a common theme in his writing (as is incest and necrophilia)." [1] I'm calling it now. It was child porn. Google doesn't like to go around deleting people's stuff. When this has happened in the past it's been child porn, which Google is obligated by governments everywhere to delete with extreme prejudice. And of course they're…

It's still problematic, even if the work was distasteful or even illegal. There was no process involved, no chance for appeal, no explanation of the charges that precipitated it. If it truly is illegal materials that violate laws, then deleting it is deleting evidence and helping cover up crimes. If it was art that borders on distasteful to some then google is deciding taste and public values with private algorithms.…

But possession of child pornography is what's illegal. They very well may have reported the owner of the blog to the authorities but, in the mean time, google was both possessing and distributing the material.

It's not that it's violating their TOS, it's that Google thought they may have been violating the law.

EDIT: At least if that's what the content was.

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