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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

#231

Post by knorker »

whack wrote: post #153

I found the following cryptic snippet, from the Guardian's coverage of this topic: "He had a featured post, twice a month, where he would take ads by escorts and highlight their literary qualities." I have little idea what the above really means, but it almost sounds like advertising/marketing for prostitution. My best guess at the moment, is that Google considered the above to be a flagrant violation of its rules, a…

Look up the case of "Thomas monopoly". Google is legally not allowed to give notice or even reason in the case of child porn. I have no idea if this is the case this time, but seems not impossible.

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

#232

Post by knorker »

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…

Look up the case of "Thomas monopoly". Google is legally not allowed to give notice or even reason in the case of child porn. I have no idea if this is the case this time, but seems not impossible.

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

#233

Post by Dylan16807 »

hackits wrote: post #107
transfire wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's NOT like that. Rather Chad already sold it all off to Craigslist and informed the owner after the fact. If Google was a storage facility and did this, free or no, they would be liable.

Storage facility will charge for the service because storing physical goods and providing 24/7 security cost money. Last time I checked they will have a clause in the contract if X weeks go by and you have not paid your bill they will auction the items off to recover the debt. Though could be different for different storage facilities. For example, lets reverse this a little bit. Lets say you're storing a clients dat…

>The client doesn't pay for 6 months. You've taken all course of action to contact the client but they're unresponsive.

Now compare that to what google did. They were owed exactly 0 dollars for 0 months, they make no attempt whatsoever to contact the client, and they shredded the data without trying to send it back.

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

#234

Post by morninj »

pjc50 wrote: post #173
a3n wrote: post #71

The hindsight-prescriptive comments here focus on backing up, and that's a sensible practice. But there was another kind of damage done here, to the man's identity, location and voice. His blog and his email address were his public persona. He used his blog and his address as identity, and as his channel of communication with followers, other artists, and I assume most of his general online communication. That person…

> Using your own domain is not absolute protection, because you don't really own your domain, you rent it. Good point; your domain can be seized for various sorts of percieved IP violation.

For trademark violations, yes. But the risk is extremely low if you use yourname.com (or some other U.S. TLD).

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

#235

Post by marcosdumay »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #95

Friendly reminder that your stuff is not "backed up" in the cloud unless you have a local copy. Otherwise it just lives in the cloud, meaning it lives on someone else's server.

Well, if you have read-only copies on different enough servers, owned by different enough people, it's a backup to some degree. Security is never an absolute.

But a local copy will almost certainly be easier to police for "uncorrelated risks in the ways that matter".

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

#236

Post by Dylan16807 »

obj-g wrote: post #120
sp332 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And maybe if your actual work is keeping you busy, you might not want to have to deal with all that on top of it.

You might not want to, but maybe you should. Case in point.

Not case in point. Whether you make your own site is completely orthogonal to whether you have backups. There are people that use blogger or wordpress for free and back it up, and there are people that pay for hosting or servers to host customized websites and don't back them up.

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

#237

Post by calgoo »

lmm wrote: post #178
a3n wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the intent of the meta-domains I mentioned in my original might be better served by a personal IPv6 block, that doesn't come from a corporation's reserved blocks. Just as I move my domain around between email (and other) providers, I could then move my IPv6 block around. Instead of asking Linode for an IP address out of their block, I could tell them "serve this block." (Or can we already do that? For a reasonable…

IP addresses are meant to be addresses ; if you move your address around everyone else has to update their routing tables. To do what you want you probably want to get your own AS Number and actually participate in routing (BGP etc). I've heard of quite small businesses doing that, but not individuals.

I was looking to do this, but it was just too hard. I believe you need to have a company / association of some kind with a VAT number to get registered. The closest I have found is going with the IPv6 tunnels from someone like Hurricane Electric, but speed is a bit limited.

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

#238

Post by marcosdumay »

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…

It is a force of nature. Other people won't always act with your best interests in mind.

There are several things we can do to reduce the risks, but after a certain point they become counter-productive. That's also a force of nature, by the way. At least of "human nature", what means, it's a force of nature as long as you are dealing with humans.

But yeah, there's plenty of room for arguing about that optimum level of risk. Software industry contracts are beyond absurd for decades already.

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

#239

Post by awesomepantsm »

67726e wrote: post #227
parineum wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then suspend the blog, and allow for some process to deal with the situation. Don't just torch everything on some suspicion of something going wrong. This isn't a new issue for Google. They're notorious for fucking with people's accounts and providing no recourse or customer support. Something happens? Better hope your uncle works at Google or your shit out of luck. Hell, I've hosted most of my personal domains' emai…

>Don't just torch everything on some suspicion of something going wrong.

You can rest assured, if it was child porn, they'd be obligued to keep backups as proof for law enforcement. I doubt the material is actually deleted, just hidden until they sort it out with the feds.

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

#240

Post by parent5446 »

67726e wrote: post #227
parineum wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then suspend the blog, and allow for some process to deal with the situation. Don't just torch everything on some suspicion of something going wrong. This isn't a new issue for Google. They're notorious for fucking with people's accounts and providing no recourse or customer support. Something happens? Better hope your uncle works at Google or your shit out of luck. Hell, I've hosted most of my personal domains' emai…

I mean, who's to say that isn't the case. The blog might still exist on Google's side, and it's just been quarantined or otherwise looks like it's been deleted from the outside.
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