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Yahoo Deletes Journalist's Pre-Paid Legacy Site After Suicide

Posted by Soulskill on from the failing-at-a-last-request dept.

New submitter digitalFlack writes "Apparently Martin Manley has been a popular blogger and newspaper journalist for many years. For his own reasons, no indication of illness, he decided sixty years on this planet was enough. He designed a 40-page website with sections such as: 'Why Suicide?' and 'Why Age 60?.' Martin planned his suicide meticulously, but to manage his legacy, he picked Yahoo. He even pre-paid for five years. After he left this mortal coil on his 60th birthday, Yahoo decided they don't want his traffic, so they took the site down. Sorry, Martin."

9 of 403 comments (clear)

  1. They didn't know he also... by sinij · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yahoo didn't know he also prepaid lawyers. Or at least lets hope so.

    Yahoo has contractual obligation to provide service, sudden death of a party is a sleazy way to weasel out of a service contract.

    1. Re: They didn't know he also... by Skiron · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Surely the would need to get a copy of the death certificate before they could do anything - at the moment (legally) it's just hearsay.

    2. Re: They didn't know he also... by EvanED · · Score: 3, Interesting

      From what I read of it, he was talking about his personal feelings and opinions.

      His site was explaining why he committed suicide. Basically by definition, that's him explaining why he felt that suicide was the best option in his case -- which is implicitly explaining why he thinks that suicide is the best option ever, which if you look at it the right way, is promoting suicide. It's not promoting suicide in the sense of "Hey Fred... you really oughta go kill yourself" or in the sense of "you should consider suicide in these cases ...", but I think you could say it is promoting suicide in the sense of "suicide can be, if you weigh the options, the best option." And without saying Yahoo was right or wrong, I can at least understand why even that would be too far for them.

    3. Re: They didn't know he also... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      So life insurance doesn't need to pay up, because their contract is with the deceased, not the beneficiaries?

    4. Re: They didn't know he also... by hedwards · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This isn't a freedom of speech issue. Freedom of speech is there so that people can contribute to public discourse without having to worry about being sent to prison or killed.

      If you're going to kill yourself before anybody has a chance to issue a rebuttal, there's no point in free speech at all. You could do that just fine in East Germany during the height of the Stazi.

      Bottom line though is that freedom of speech isn't particularly useful if it's just a collection of sound bites where nobody is responding and or defending their position. Sure, it's better than having no freedom of speech, but it's not particularly useful.

    5. Re: They didn't know he also... by gronofer · · Score: 3, Interesting

      As argued by Hegesias of Cyrene thousands of years ago. He wrote in a book that life was so miserable that people would be better off killing themselves, and it was supposedly so convincing that many people followed the advice. The local king wasn't impressed.

  2. don't see where it matters by roc97007 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    He *thought* he had a website up for five years when he died. He'll never know the difference.

    But because geeks always want to fix things ... it seems to me that if he had the website in someone else's name, or even in a lawyer's name, it'd still be up.

    --
    Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
  3. Yahoo Doing Evil Again by interval1066 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    The site is paid for, Yahoo needs to do the right thing and leave the site up. Dead people don't have rights, so the poster who asked about Manley's lawyers is right on the money, hopefully he set up a legal trust to deal with these issues. If Manley had set this up with Japanese hoster they probably wouldn't have thought twice about hosting the site.

    --
    Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
  4. Re:Read a little of it by El_Muerte_TDS · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why isn't he entitled to decide when he has lived enough? Why does he need valid medical reasons?

    I think you're right, it's a failing of society. Society rather plays for god and decide who lives and who dies.

    (I only hope he performed a clean suicide rather than jumping in front of a train, or something)