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Google Deletes Artist's Blog and a Decade Of His Work Along With It (fusion.net)

Posted by msmash on from the what's-happening dept.

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?

5 of 465 comments (clear)

  1. archive.is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    http://archive.is/3tNs

  2. Try Resurrect Pages plugin by Solandri · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'll join the chorus of voices saying it was incredibly stupid to use an online service as your only copy of your materials, with no local backup. But what's done is done. If the Wayback Machine doesn't have a copy, try installing the Resurrect Pages add-on to Firefox. It links to a lot more caching and archiving services than just the Wayback Machine.

    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/resurrect-pages/

  3. Re:Save often, make backups by hey! · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If anything I'd say this guy is ahead of his time. Those of us who started in this field in the 1980s are fully aware of value of backups, but m kids' generation trusts the cloud to always be there for them.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  4. Re:Ahem. by TheReaperD · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I wouldn't be surprised if a DMCA complaint made by a 3rd party (and likely one hired on behalf of him) is behind this.

    --
    "Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
  5. Re:Cloud and cloud, what is cloud?! by MillionthMonkey · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I never trust "the cloud" with anything anymore. Whoever came up with that name was probably trying to send a message- clouds have a habit of blowing away.

    You can't even trust gmail anymore. Recently I did searches for some important email conversations I had and they had just vanished without a trace. I thought I was deleting them myself by mistake. Eventually I realized that for the past year, whenever I reply to an email, and ONLY if I reply to it, Google throws the whole conversation into the Trash folder.