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Google Deletes Artist's Blog and a Decade Of His Work Along With It (fusion.net)
Ethan Chiel, writing for Fusion: Artist Dennis Cooper has a big problem on his hands: Most of his artwork from the past 14 years just disappeared. It's gone because it was kept entirely on his blog, which the experimental author and artist has maintained on the Google-owned platform Blogger since 2002 (Google bought the service in 2003). At the end of June, Cooper says he discovered he could no longer access his Blogger account and that his blog had been taken offline. Along with his blog, Google disabled Cooper's email address, through which most of his correspondence was conducted, he told me via Facebook message. He got no communication from Google about why it decided to kill his email address and blog. Cooper used the blog to post his fiction, research, and visual art, and as Artforum explains, it was also "a platform through which he engaged almost daily with a community of followers and fellow artists." His latest GIF novel (as the term suggests, a novel constructed with animated GIFs) was also mostly saved to the blog.WayBackMachine has some of the pages from his blog, but they are only screenshots. Google Cache is also of not much help. Slashdot readers, just out of curiosity, is there anything -- any service -- Mr. Cooper could use to get his artwork back?
"Cooper, who lives in France, told Artforum he’s consulted a French lawyer specializing in intellectual property. He told me he’s considering suing Google"
Blogger TOS:
"OTHER THAN AS EXPRESSLY SET OUT IN THESE TERMS OR ADDITIONAL TERMS, NEITHER GOOGLE NOR ITS SUPPLIERS OR DISTRIBUTORS MAKE ANY SPECIFIC PROMISES ABOUT THE SERVICES. FOR EXAMPLE, WE DON’T MAKE ANY COMMITMENTS ABOUT THE CONTENT WITHIN THE SERVICES, THE SPECIFIC FUNCTIONS OF THE SERVICES, OR THEIR RELIABILITY, AVAILABILITY, OR ABILITY TO MEET YOUR NEEDS. WE PROVIDE THE SERVICES “AS IS”."
Oh would you look at that ...
This is just a case of someone that doesn't know how the Internet works, and maybe can't read. It's documented elsewhere that his account was disabled because of a violation of Google's terms, and when that happens, after you try to log into google there's a prominent message saying as much with instructions on how to get more info, etc.
Nothing has been deleted. Nothing is gone. He just needs to take care of whatever violation he triggered with Google.
And, as stated elsewhere by everybody and their mothers, back your stuff up someplace else in the physical world. Hard to believe it took this guy 63 years to learn that lesson.
He was probably counting on Google, as the service provider, to backup his data for him. The way that (if you let it) Apple backs up all of your iPhone data constantly so that if you drop it in the toilet, you just get a new iPhone and everything in a few hours magically comes back the way you left it.
That's the promise of "the cloud" we keep hearing about from the marketing departments. This artist, being an artist not a tech guy, believed it.
But this is actually par for the course for Google. I moved all of my clients off of Blogger about five years ago after one of their Blogger blogs simply disappeared without a trace and no recourse. After a little digging, I turned up HUNDREDS of similar cases of people's Blogger accounts vanishing into thin air with zero help from Google. This has been going on for years, and Google is silent about it.
After all, you get what you pay for.
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."