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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

#261

Post by pgwhalen »

clevernickname wrote: post #256
x0x0 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Censorship is the suppression of free speech, public communication or other information which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions. Governments, private organizations and individuals may engage in censorship. Sounds like censorship to me, just a socially acceptable form of it…

Meme? That's what freedom of speech is. It specifically has to do with the government. Censorship is a broader term, but don't invoke "free speech" if you don't want it to apply to the government case.

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

#262

Post by paulcole »

x0x0 wrote: post #248
falcolas wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just because it's reasonable doesn't mean it's not censorship.

Going a step further, there's nothing inherently wrong with censorship.

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

#263

Post by DanBC »

raverbashing wrote: post #251
emodendroket wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure that the intended message was that we should not associate poor customer service with autism and then tar autistic people for whatever Google decides to do.

> then tar autistic people for whatever Google decides to do. Who's saying that? And Google does it because of incompetence, not because of a condition they have no control over. That's the main difference I'm not implying Google does it because they suffer from autism, and maybe there's a better adjective to describe what they do.

> I'm not implying Google does it because they suffer from autism,

Yes you are. Here's what you said:

> Given that Google's customer support has autistic tendencies to put it mildly

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

#264

Post by bradrydzewski »

I think a more appropriate title would be "Google disables artist's Blog". The author describes the blog and email accounts as disabled and has no direct evidence that anything has been permanently deleted

> I’ve asked about whether the work on Cooper’s blog has been deleted permanently or is simply on a server somewhere, and I’ll update this post if I hear back.

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

#265

Post by clevernickname »

elif wrote: post #255
falcolas wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Google doesn't need a legal cause. It is their service, so they only need a cause defined in their own terms of service.

Google acts like it is a public utility when it is convenient to them, and a private service when it isn't.

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

#266

Post by true_religion »

parineum wrote: post #220
kennywinker wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From the OP who said:

> "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)."

Because of the words 'book' and 'writing', I have the impression that everything there is written text and no certainly no pictures.

This puts it in a nebulous position, at least in the USA.

Dunlop v. U.S., 165 U.S. 486 (1897), ended up ruling that text-only content can be deemed obscene and being text-only is not a reason to get total 1st amendment protection. However later cases, decided there was a division between erotica and obscene material, which is essentially decided on a case-by-case basis subjectively.

When it comes to things such as obscenity, its not really enough to go by our 'feelings' and intuition on the matter.

For instance, would you believe the US is a fully functioning, 1st world democracy, where sex toys are illegal (Alabama, upheld by State Supreme court and enforced as recently as 2009)?

To me, personally, anything that comes entirely from someones fanciful imagination, no matter how distasteful, should not be considered illegal unless it directly results in the harm of another individual.

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

#267

Post by Frondo »

andrey_utkin wrote: post #108
leonroy wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fully agree with your comments, but I fear we're going in the wrong direction with the silo-ization of the web and the decline in open standards being ratified and used by large companies. Just look at Google's hostility towards maintaining standardized IMAP/SMTP support for third party mail clients. Google Apps and Office 365 would drop IMAP access to their services in a heartbeat if they could. Furthermore a lot of…

We need to follow Richard Stallman in his obsession with ehtics. "Sorry mate, I find FB/Google/Skype/etc. unethical, so I won't get in touch with you using this, let's better stick with email, phone call or meeting in person".

No, we just need to stop trying to solve social problems with technical solutions.

Domain getting stolen by a registrar? That's a crime, treat it like theft, there ought to be some justice for that theft.

Big business doing something awful/scandalous/inappropriate? Change the laws, and work to persuade people that it ought to be societally unacceptable to violate those laws.

I see this a lot on tech-oriented forums, that you can "fix" social problems with the right kind of code, or you can get out of legal repercussions with the right set of legalese, and really, no, stuff like this will stop happening when people's ethics expand to cover new stuff.

Treating business and law like a black box, or something to be worked around, as though there were sufficient cleverness to solve everything without engaging with larger society, well, no, that's not gonna get you anywhere.

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

#268

Post by true_religion »

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…

I think you have a fairly limited definition of pornography.

Any kind of writing with a purely puerile sexual-intent, lacking in any redeeming scientific, cultural or educational merit, is considered pornographic.

Considering the writing is pornographic... then the fact it used literally representing of people under the age of 18, would make it 'pornography involving children' or... as a short hand 'child pornography'.

Let's not argue over definitions here. If you feel that this man shouldn't be prosecuted because no real people were harmed, that's a good place to start. Obscenity laws need to be clarified.

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

#269

Post by 67726e »

parent5446 wrote: post #240
67726e wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The point is not the "soft delete" vs "hard delete" but their total lack of transparency or customer support. It doesn't matter to the end user the difference if all outward appearance is that the blog was deleted.

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

#270

Post by clevernickname »

pgwhalen wrote: post #261
clevernickname wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Censorship is the suppression of free speech, public communication or other information which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions. Governments, private organizations and individuals may engage in censorship. Sounds like censorship to me, just a socially acceptable form of it…

Meme? That's what freedom of speech is. It specifically has to do with the government. Censorship is a broader term, but don't invoke "free speech" if you don't want it to apply to the government case.

What use is the legal right to speech if your neighbors will bash your head in for it? Freedom of speech is not just the right, but also the idea of a society that tolerates it. This is what bothers me: Every time an internet corporation deletes someone's account for wrongthink, a herd of crypto-facists pops up to remind everyone that the First only pertains to government censorship (or even erroneously claim that only governments are capable of censorship). They are missing (and indeed proving) the point. The point is that they live in a society that encourages the limitation of expression, and that they are happy about this as long as they don't like the things being censored.
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