Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

fusion.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 457 posts

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

#371

Post by madmax96 »

resu_nimda wrote: post #367
madmax96 wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's true that no obligation is created under our > current legal structure, but I think the statement > still has relevance. Your stance reminds of me people > that said, in the wake of the subprime mortgage > crisis, "well those loans were legal and the people > who defaulted were free not to take them." Yes, that > is true, and we definitely would all be better off if > people took the accountability and persona…

I wouldn't dream of suggesting that access to data that you knowingly stored some place with questionable data persistence guarantees is as fundamental as access to water. You may disagree. Personally I would like to see society move in this direction. The data persistence guarantees should not be questionable, they should be legally enforced. I'm pretty sure we could come up with some terms that aren't realistically…

I respect that opinion, and I'm with you on treating (computation in general, in fact) as a public utility. It seems that you and I have different attitudes regarding the scope of government involvement in this sort of thing.

I appreciate the discussion and your thoughtful and forthcoming attitude:) Makes the internet much more enjoyable to use when disagreements are carefully examined rather than the usual tendency in comment threads to degenerate into being just plain mean.

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

#372

Post by orthecreedence »

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 we live in a world where publishing seemingly requires the cooperation the private sector

With real net-neutrality protections, I believe this is false. You are free to connect your own server to the internet and serve your own content through it. Also, if you do host with a third-party, it still makes sense to do backups of your data so if something like this does happen, you can move to another host.

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

#373

Post by tedunangst »

resu_nimda wrote: post #340
madmax96 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A mentality Google fosters constantly with virtually > all of their products. This statement has no relevance to the conversation -- it doesn't magically produce any obligation for Google to act differently than it does. > The first words you see when you visit > https://www.google.com/drive/ is "A safe place for > all your files". And clearly in the terms of service (the only thing that actually matters,) it says:…

This statement has no relevance to the conversation -- it doesn't magically produce any obligation for Google to act differently than it does. It's true that no obligation is created under our current legal structure, but I think the statement still has relevance. Your stance reminds of me people that said, in the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis, "well those loans were legal and the people who defaulted were fre…

What that argument achieves is educating people about the dangers of the decisions they make. The alternative is basically "carry on as you were and hope next time it works out."

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

#374

Post by tedunangst »

67726e wrote: post #269
parent5446 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Torch everything" is perhaps a poor way to convey you mean "soft delete".

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

#375

Post by DougMerritt »

madmax96 wrote: post #332
nitrogen wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*This statement has no relevance to the conversation -- it doesn't magically produce any obligation for Google to act differently than it does." Actually it kind of does -- saying one thing and doing another is a deceptive business practice, and deceiving consumers is generally frowned upon.

> Actually it kind of does -- saying one thing and doing > another is a deceptive business practice, and deceiving > consumers is generally frowned upon False advertisement isn't the question here -- nice strawman. Google specifically states they make no guarantees, so they're not "saying one thing and doing another." They're saying one thing and doing that thing. The parent mentioned that Google encouraged technolog…

It's rather unfair to accuse the other person of creating a strawman.

Google was quoted above as calling the service "A safe place for all your files", and deletion is clearly not "safe", and there have been court decisions saying that fine print caveats cannot completely negate the clear English part of the advertising.

Of course, there have been court decisions saying the opposite, too, but that's sufficient for the OP's point to be better than "strawman" material even if, hypothetically, their argument turns out to be incorrect.

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

#376

Post by tedunangst »

mcbits wrote: post #353
drusepth wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're a private service all the time. Keep that in mind and you'll go far.

Corporations such as Google are much more like quasi-governmental municipal corporations than like Mom & Pop's Private Bakery.

Quasi governmental corporations are typically granted special privileges (protected monopolies). If Google doesn't have some arrangement like all blogging must be done on blogspot, they're not quasi government.

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

#377

Post by clevernickname »

sctb wrote: post #350
clevernickname wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Please comment civilly and substantively, or not at all.

I should have known better, but it was intended as a joke.

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

#378

Post by dmurray »

ekidd wrote: post #211
corobo wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Running two identical disks in a RAID, or where the same desk could cave in and sweep them off, seems like it should be covered by "1 offsite" rather than requiring two different types of media.

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

#379

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

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.…

He's not a Google customer. Hard to establish standing when a property owner cleans up your graffiti.

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

#380

Post by slackstation »

How does one make you primary artistic medium the internet for a decade and yet don't know how it works enough to have backups of your work?

It's as if I worked in artistic welding but, never learned anything about the dangers of highly pressurized tanks of gas and then get surprised when leaving the tank valve open causes a fire and ruins your artwork.

He didn't have any backups anywhere else. He just completely relied on Google to do it for free forever just because. After a decade of making work that controversial, you never just save that stuff to jump drive?

This person is incompetent and irresponsible. Google owes him nothing.

Post reply on HN