Google Deletes Dennis Cooper's Blog, Erasing Years of Artistic Output
http://www.artforum.com/news/id=62177
On June 27, when writer Dennis Cooper tried to access his
blog--hosted by Blogger since 2002--he discovered that Google
had deleted his fourteen-year project along with his Gmail
account. Since then, readers have been greeted with a message
simply stating, "Sorry, the blog at
denniscooper-theweaklings.blogspot.com has been removed. This
address is not available for new blogs." Cooper is not
certain whether Google merely disabled the blog or completely
erased it. The latter would mean he has lost years of artistic
output that included writings, research, and photographs, as
well as a platform through which he engaged almost daily with
a community of followers and fellow artists.
- - -
Several people asked me to look into this. I was previously unfamiliar
with this author or his work, and obviously I'm not in a position to
judge if it crossed a Blogger ToS line given the nature of the material
apparently involved. There is a great deal of sexually-oriented material
hosted on Blogger. My impression is that it usually takes hitting a
serious third rail -- like child porn for example -- before something
like this occurs (in a case like that, all sorts of legal obligations
are immediately triggered). However, in the absence of a legal referral
in such a context or other illicit material being involved, it normally
would be reasonably expected that users would be able to at the very
least retrieve their existing corpus of data stored with Google.
This is a longstanding issue of concern to me in the general case.
Specifically, that when Google closes a user account, the rationale for
that closure is typically opaque externally, and avenues to contest
such decisions largely ineffectual. Google's policy of total account
lockouts including all associated data in all Google services is
problematic in cases of error or when only a specific element of data
triggered the event, again assuming no explicit illegality (even in
the latter case, arguments could be made that their legal data should
still be available for the author to download).
A fundamental "whose data is it?" issue is in play. Prior to an
account being forcibly closed, Google users can easily download
virtually all of their data via the excellent Google Takeout system
(google.com/takeout) -- this includes Blogger data.
But the instant an account has been closed by Google, the user is cut
off from all of their associated data, which for many users can
represent relatively enormous amounts of work.
Again, I do not know more about the specifics of this case, but the
general form issues are very important and remain long unresolved.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein
Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
I have consulted to Google, but I am not currently
doing so -- my opinions expressed here are mine alone.
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