Slashdot Mirror
Protection From Online Eviction?
AOL has been shutting down its free Web services, in some cases with little or no notice to users, and they are not the only ones. This blog post on the coming "datapocalypse" makes the case that those who host Web content should be required to provide notice and access to data for a year, and be held strictly accountable the way landlords are before they can evict a tenant. Some commenters on the post argue that you get what you pay for with free Web services, and that users should be backing up their data anyway. What do you think, should there be required notice and access before online hosts take user data offline for good?
I wonder how many of the "It's free, and they should've backed up" commenters here have full backups of their GMail accounts?
As it happens, I didn't get a gmail account, because I didn't want my e-mail to depend entirely on a provider's largesse. I pay for my e-mail.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Have you ever been removed from an online group or forum by some megalomaniacal or otherwise disturbed individual in a position of authority? I was summarily removed from a Meetup.com group by the organizer: a woman I had once rejected had a friendship (or more) with the man, and declared to him that she wouldn't be involved with the group if I was. She also invented a few false justifications having nothing to do with my spurning her. He was too delusional to even question her, and his reaction was to remove me from the group and advise me to "get therapy".
It's disturbing to live in an alleged macro-democratic society where on a micro scale such totalitarian things still happen.