Google deletes artist’s blog, a decade of his work • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by a3n » Fri, Jul 15, 2016, 5:10 PM UTC

progman wrote: post #225

gtirloni wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on the non-commercial aspects of this proposed solution? I think it's especially important to make it clear where the money will come from.

From the users of course. Remember the modem times when the users had to pay for the phone bills. In the same way users could use their phone lines for the next internet. We could also build a wifi mesh with mobile devices.

Not to be negative, but last mile was a viable part of the internet because the government mandates that that system be reliable. I'm interested in a wifi mesh, but until this moment I haven't thought about whether the government, or the technology itself, focuses on high reliability in that area. I think all the government cares about is if you don't interfere, but they don't care if your bits get through.

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

#242

Post by calgoo » Fri, Jul 15, 2016, 5:14 PM UTC

a3n wrote: post #109

vroombaprime wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck getting email to work with that setup though.

Yeah, at that point, in this day and age, running email either has to be your day job to keep that running, or you as an individual have to at least be capable of doing that job; most people aren't, and I pay Fastmail to get that done.

I did it for 2 years until November last year. Its not... too hard. You find the pages where you can keep an eye on you address etc. Issues normally happen because of two things:

1. Misconfigured servers: This is the hardest part. Rule number 1: keep it as small as possible. Disable everything, and then only enable what you need. Rule 2: READ, I mean read every document, blog post etc you can find about e-mail, email attacks, etc.

2. IP address: The normal address you get from Digital Occean or Linode for example, are normally horrible as a lot of spam has been sent from them. If your lucky it might work, but check the lists for those IPs. Try to change if you can, until you find one with low scores. Also, I dont know if this helped, but i had my domain on both Gmail and Outlook servers for a while before migrating to my own servers. I dont know if this helped me to not get stuck in their filters etc? Or I was just lucky i guess :)

I finally moved because I did not have the energy to keep up with the server etc, and when i noticed that i had not even logged on to the server for 3 months, i just moved it to gmail. I am however looking at migrating away from google, as i don't like the web interface (use it from the iPad now). So who knows where I'll end up next.

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

#243

Post by wtetzner » Fri, Jul 15, 2016, 5:15 PM UTC

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…

Google's services aren't free. They provide services and in return they get to serve advertisements to their users.

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

#244

Post by madmax96 » Fri, Jul 15, 2016, 5:26 PM UTC

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.…

The data resided on Google's servers -- their property. Read the terms and conditions you agree to, Google doesn't owe you anything.

    > If it was art that borders on distasteful to some 
    > then google is deciding taste and public values with 
    > private algorithms.

But that's well within their right to do. If you don't like it, there's an easy solution: don't use Google.

This behavior is well-known (remember Google Reader?) and expected out of Google. If you have any data on any cloud storage facility, you probably have no guarantee of its long-term persistence. You should regularly backup all your data that you value. You can get a 3 Terabyte backup drive today on Amazon for

    > 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.

Agreed. But, there are alternatives to using a hosting company and there are ways outside of the internet to distribute information. Just because you have a right to publish does not imply that you have a right to be published, nor should it. The author was no customer of Google so the fact that so many people are upset is indicative of the growing technological entitlement mentality. Hosting isn't free, and Google was providing a gratis service to a user. For all we know, a government put pressure on Google to remove the blog -- do we really expect Google to spend money on a legal team to resist such a request?

People either don't value the ability to express distasteful opinions, or they are completely unaware of these practices in modern technology companies.

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

#245

Post by falcolas » Fri, Jul 15, 2016, 5:27 PM UTC

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…

Writing about incest, necrophilia, sex with children; these are not child pornography. Neither are artistic renderings about such subjects.

Only obscene photographs of actual children (and apparently 3d models with photographic skins) are considered to be child pornography (and those primarily because they are artifacts of child abuse).

Unless he crossed that line, there's still no legal cause to pull down his material. It's worth remembering that there are stories of Google deleting accounts due to pictures of cherubs as well, so there is reason to doubt Google's reasons for bringing the account down.

Even if you find the material distasteful, it's not a reason to condemn someone, nor condone the censorship of that material. Remember, there are some who consider images of women not covered by a hijab to be distasteful and obscene.

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

#246

Post by jpna66dd » Fri, Jul 15, 2016, 5:27 PM UTC

arundelo wrote: post #161

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…

I've had my own domain for quite a while and have been meaning to start using an email address on that domain. The main reason I haven't is that I'm procrastinating the initial trouble of setting it up, but I'm also a bit scared from hearing stories of people who do this and then occasionally have email to them or from them bounce or disappear. (Maybe this is not as common a problem as I get the impression it is.) Ed…

I had my own domain-based email address rerouted to yahoo email. Started to get a LOT of spam that would not get filtered out at all, not even close from the the yahoo-based email filtering. Gave up the forward. Maybe should try gmail?

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

#247

Post by clevernickname » Fri, Jul 15, 2016, 5:27 PM UTC

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…

I don't know what dystopian hellhole you crawled out of, but stories and drawings of imaginary naked children aren't illegal in the US of A.

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

#248

Post by x0x0 » Fri, Jul 15, 2016, 5:31 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #245

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…

Writing about incest, necrophilia, sex with children; these are not child pornography. Neither are artistic renderings about such subjects. Only obscene photographs of actual children (and apparently 3d models with photographic skins) are considered to be child pornography (and those primarily because they are artifacts of child abuse). Unless he crossed that line, there's still no legal cause to pull down his materi…

It's perfectly reasonable for Google to not wish to host drawings of naked children, nor sex stories about underage children. That isn't censorship.

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

#249

Post by JustSomeNobody » Fri, Jul 15, 2016, 5:32 PM UTC

>“[If Google doesn’t] respond and rectify the situation, I won’t have any choice but to sue them,” Cooper wrote. “I don’t want to do that for obvious reasons, but I will if I have to.”

Really? Because you didn't take the necessary steps to create your own backups!??

Edit: Reading some of the other comments about the ... um ... content ... of his blog, no wonder he didn't keep backups!!!

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

#250

Post by cft » Fri, Jul 15, 2016, 5:36 PM UTC

There is a legal definition of child pornography:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2256

Did his work fit this definition? I doubt it, because he would have been in jail by now, given that he never concealed his name. Also Google is notorious for heavy handed treatment of smaller AdSense publishers, which makes me doubly sceptical.

http://www.webpronews.com/another-publisher-goes-after-googl...