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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

#441
Sue for damages and get the data back via discovery before you lose.

You could also ask your "fans" to send you their cached copies. Or you could search your local browser history. Or you could hire forensic analysists to examine any drives you may have had the data on.

You could also pay lots of fees and bloat up the bitcoin blockchain with it, if you don't want to lose it again.

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

#442
post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it your opinion that a reasonable interpretation of 6409 is that a submission agent may falsify the sender of an email? Or create false associations between personal names and email addresses?

No RFC rule prevents that, and as far as I know no RFCs even try to define what constitutes a true or false association between a personal name and an email address. But RFC 6409 gives site policy unrestricted permission to allow or deny that. (Well, almost unrestricted. The results have to be syntactically valid.)

I don't think your interpretation of the RFCs is natural or remotely reasonable; in fact it leads to absurd consequences. We'll have to leave it at that. I stand by everything in the article.

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

#443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except neither of those things is "free".

All three need to pay the bills, but none of them charges for most of the services offered, so I'd say they are similarly free.

The government collects taxes, the church collects tithe, Google collects ad impressions...

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

#444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Directly resulting in their harm" is an unenforceable standard, unless you are referring to hitting someone with a printed copy, which I suspect you are not.

An example of direct harm, would be an totally imaginary article that aims to humiliate or defame someone. It's not true; it's not real, but its directly aimed at destroying a persons reputation anyways. This is something that current day harassment laws (and in some countries slander laws) already cover.

It works poorly. A true article that destroys someone's reputation is equally harmful, but (in the US), completely protected.

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

#445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your house should be safe, secure, a place to store all your valuables, yet it's understood it could be robbed, destroyed by nature, or burn down by accident. You're responsible for making backups or taking out whatever insurance you think is reasonable for your data.

There is a difference between deliberate vs accidental deletion. This was not a random act. Thus is like the fire department coming and burning down your house.

Arson is a thing, and you should be insured against it. Plus, sometimes the fire department does set fires: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/alberta/firefighter-char...

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

#446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

When is their birthday. Gift them one of those 64GB USB-sticks. Write "BACKUPS" on it with a nice marker or something. Tell them to copy their important stuff into a folder YYYY-MM-DD. If the laptop is there, make them do it now :) Depending on how big that crucial data is (given it's a few years old laptop, can't be too big, right?), after you've shown them it takes just 15 minutes or so, tell them to do this every so often so it's full for their next birthday :) [again, depending how large the data is, and/or how much you're willing to spend on a life-saving birthday gift ;)]

Sure it's not a bullet-proof system, but maybe as they experience the feeling of security, they'll get a taste for implementing something more comprehensive. Lots of low-hanging fruit, too :) But this is already a hundred times better than what they (don't) have now.

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

#447

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. 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…

> 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…

> After a quick Google (heh, the irony!) there doesn't seem like there's an easy way to backup cloud data. This seems like it might actually be a good personal project for me...

https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout

You can download all your google data from there. I wish all cloud services provided such a feature.

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

#448

This just underscores the need for a government to defend our rights. Corporations can't be relied on to do it for us.

Although I agree completely with your statement, especially wrt right to repair and DRM, I don't know what you would want the government to do in this case to protect a person's data when they choose to store it on a free service that offers no guarantees of anything, and specifically states in their TOS that they may remove an account for any reason at any time.

On top of that, this person chose not to take the simple step of using Google Takeout to back up the years of data that he couldn't afford to lose. If my business or mental health depended on that data, I'd be doing that every couple of weeks at least.

I do think it would be nice if Google would, when they remove an account, give you a couple of days to go to Takeout and download the data.

Just deleting it with no warning seems very rude indeed, especially when you consider the amount of advertising revenue they generate from serving people's data.

Google should also make less claims about, "A safe place to store your data"!, if they continue to remove people's data without warning or recourse.

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

#449

Reminds me of what happened to my old Youtube account. One day it was just taken down - no warnings, no chance to back anything up (I had a backup on my home computer, but that hard drive was reformatted while I was in college). Contacted Google, and never got a response. Lost some videos I made as a kid that I would love to see again. Aside from the obvious "back up your stuff" mantra, this points to a couple things…

Re: Point 1, I agree with you that we definitely need a decentralized web, but I wonder how many people would be mirroring your youtube videos. Even IPFS still needs your data to be stored somewhere. I have some youtube videos with literally 2 or 3 views. Those wouldn't be mirrored on a decentralized net. Zeronet is working on using "zerocoin" as a way you can pay the decentralized net to mirror your data. This is a killer feature. I don't know if IPFS has a similar feature but I hope so.

Re: Point 2, I agree completely, it seems way too draconian to just delete immediately with no warning. With the size of google, there's always going to be the chance that an account is removed by mistake. At least give people a couple of day's chance to get their data before it is removed, if only as a goodwill gesture of thanks to the millions of people providing free data for Google to serve and make advertising revenue from.

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

#450
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Do I really have to explain figures of speech to you? Beyond that, tendency is defined as: an inclination towards a particular characteristic or type of behaviour More importantly, it does not mean "it (Google) is that (Autistic)" If I had said "Google is literally autistic" I would agree with you.

The point isn't that anyone thinks you mean it literally; it's that they find it offensive to use "autistic" as a synonym of "rude and inconsiderate."
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