6 ms·

It seems almost disrespectful to republish all of the writings that _why had decided to delete.

by fwip 4y ago

cecilpl2 4y ago
For better or worse, when you publish something on the internet it no longer belongs entirely to you.
- ben0x539 4y ago
  Does that mean it's not disrespectful?
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    This is a long-standing question. They teach stories in high school these days that came from manuscripts Franz Kafka explicitly demanded be burned upon his death. It is, perhaps, disrespectful. Perhaps we all disrespect him with every new generation of students. Perhaps that's a strangely fitting fate for the man who is the namesake of the term "Kafkaesque." I'd like to hope he'd laugh, but I know only the writings and not the man.
    - googlryas 4y ago
      Ironically enough, _why's last act "CLOSURE", he talks about how he read everything by Kafka, even the deleted stuff. So I have to hope he wouldn't have a problem with someone creating this archive to keep his deleted writings alive.
    - drewcoo 4y ago
      Kafka is dead. It's difficult to show he is harmed by anything we do today without resorting to the supernatural. _why is invisible, not known to be dead. It is possible to harm unseen people.
- jholman 4y ago
  As a matter of legality, that's wrong, of course. This is copyright violation. For whatever that's worth. But I think the bigger point is, if you're a fan of WTLS, it seems very odd to be so disrespectful of WTLS's desires. I can only conclude the the party who put up the archive is someone who wants to hurt WTLS's feelings, or at least is quite willing to do so.
  - upupandup 4y ago
    You can't take back what you publish in public domain which is what happens when you publish content on the internet. You may own the copyright in technically but it would be freely shared and distributed on the internet with your only recourse being submitting DMCA notices to platforms. Youtube does this very well but only because they are required to by large corporations that can litigate. The average HN user who posts blog content and deletes it is not going to be able to stop it from being distributed. Technically they own the copyright to its content but the end result would be identical to if he or she had announced it to be in public domain. Anybody anywhere could freely share and publish its content on platforms without any consequences unless you notify the platform with DMCA notice and it would be largely up to the discretion of the platform to comply or not as many hosting services explicitly advertise such "bulletproof" hosting. Your own take on what's moral and not has no bearing here since we don't know how the author feels about his work being shared. Yeah I get it that he has copyright to it but its not exactly enforceable on the internet.
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      The scale of the Internet makes it, in the general case, impossible to prevent such re-hosting somewhere, at some level of publicity. Of course, as per the laws of most countries it is also a copyright violation and the copyright holder can absolutely sue for such behavior, with penalties ranging from a legal obligation to cease to host the content to damages.
      - bitwize 4y ago
        I think _why is only slightly more likely to sue over these materials than William Gibson is to sue over the text of Agrippa, the "ephemeral poem" whose text was recovered and sent all over the internet shortly after its release.
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  No _why still owns the copyright on them and if you try to republish them in violation of any license they put on them (like requiring attribution, etc.) then you are in violation of their copyright and the law. The files and such may live forever, but your ability to publish them, reproduce them, etc. is only allowed if you were granted a license to do so.. i.e. if _why published them under a permissive or open source license.
  - jopperdoo 4y ago
    You’re explaining this to someone who undoubtedly knows that, and is making a different point than you think (which is that it doesn’t matter). We all know what copyright is. We all know nobody cares online, too. Those of us who remember the work when published originally also know that you’re making an argument that _why would hate you making, and that they consciously chose to avoid through how they published. I can tell how you’re arguing here that you don’t remember or didn’t know _why’s preferences, which is itself somewhat disrespectful. Stick to the respect, which is an interesting thought to consider, and spare the copyright litigation. It’s honestly tedious.
    - qbasic_forever 4y ago
      No one other than _why can say what their intentions and desires for their works are. The exact same argument you're making is what someone who would steal _why's work and charge money to republish it would make. Imagine if someone ganked the poignant guide to ruby and it became a NYT bestseller... can they just say "oh this is what _why would have wanted, for more people to read this" and walk away with all the profits? Copyright is there for a reason, to protect the owner of a work. If _why chooses to do so they can go after anyone republishing their work for money or not.
      - enneff 4y ago
        That’s totally different to republishing something for free.
      - Aeolun 4y ago
- tomcam 4y ago
  I agree with you morally but legally you are completely wrong of course. Anything you originate is owned by you, at least in the United States
UncleOxidant 4y ago
Are we sure _why isn't somehow involved in this?
- that_guy_iain 4y ago
  It's a pretty good guess, he has been found, reached out to, etc. He just wants to move on from that time in his life. So it must feel really weird to him that people go to so much trouble to keep his old texts alife. It's like the whole _why thing is now completely separate to him and it's now about the idea of him and people care more about the idea of _why. It kinda feels like making a tribute site/song/whatever to your first love years a decade later.
MatthiasPortzel 4y ago
Did _why take them offline because he didn’t want anyone to read them? I thought it was more like a book going out of publication—there’s no desire from the author that people should stop reading it, just that it’s out of the author’s hands. I don’t know if _why ever expressed a desire that people shouldn’t go back and read his writing.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  It is assumed but not proven that _why's final thoughts about killing that pseudonym are captured in CLOSURE [1]. There's a lot of different takeaways from that and other contemporary writings of _why. Some of them are that _why wished to pursue the Right to Be Forgotten, not just in the GDPR terminology sense, but in a "Last Chance to See" existential way. Those impressions yield that _why watched the internet transition from "pseudonyms are fine and ephemeral" to "everyone knows your real name and pseudonyms are permanent fixtures in the modern internet" and tried as hard as possible to kill everything about that pseudonym as Performance Art. As a reminder of an internet long gone. As a reminder of a Right to be Forgotten. From that perspective, this archive is maybe a bit of putting a Banksy into the Louvre. It's out of context, it's maybe against the artist's wishes, it's kind of weird and over-pedestalizing a legendary figure. (Arguably _why's last stand failed to account for that little last bit, that human tendency even older than the internet of myth making and legend building. As this shows, as the history of mentions of _why on HN alone every few months shows, legends loom large in culture and _why was already a part of the programming legendarium before he tried to murder that pseudonym.) [1] https://github.com/steveklabnik/CLOSURE/raw/master/CLOSURE.pdf https://github.com/steveklabnik/CLOSURE/raw/master/CLOSURE.p...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- LukeShu 4y ago
  > there’s no desire from the author that people should stop reading it, just that it’s out of the author’s hands If it were just his own servers that lapsed, sure. But he actively deleted his GitHub repos.
andrew_ 4y ago
The internet is forever, as they say.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

It seems almost disrespectful to republish all of the writings that _why had decided to delete.

by fwip 4y ago

It seems almost disrespectful to republish all of the writings that _why had decided to delete.

cecilpl2 4y ago

For better or worse, when you publish something on the internet it no longer belongs entirely to you.

ben0x539 4y ago
Does that mean it's not disrespectful?
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  This is a long-standing question. They teach stories in high school these days that came from manuscripts Franz Kafka explicitly demanded be burned upon his death. It is, perhaps, disrespectful. Perhaps we all disrespect him with every new generation of students. Perhaps that's a strangely fitting fate for the man who is the namesake of the term "Kafkaesque." I'd like to hope he'd laugh, but I know only the writings and not the man.
  - googlryas 4y ago
    Ironically enough, _why's last act "CLOSURE", he talks about how he read everything by Kafka, even the deleted stuff. So I have to hope he wouldn't have a problem with someone creating this archive to keep his deleted writings alive.
  - drewcoo 4y ago
    Kafka is dead. It's difficult to show he is harmed by anything we do today without resorting to the supernatural. _why is invisible, not known to be dead. It is possible to harm unseen people.
jholman 4y ago
As a matter of legality, that's wrong, of course. This is copyright violation. For whatever that's worth. But I think the bigger point is, if you're a fan of WTLS, it seems very odd to be so disrespectful of WTLS's desires. I can only conclude the the party who put up the archive is someone who wants to hurt WTLS's feelings, or at least is quite willing to do so.
- upupandup 4y ago
  You can't take back what you publish in public domain which is what happens when you publish content on the internet. You may own the copyright in technically but it would be freely shared and distributed on the internet with your only recourse being submitting DMCA notices to platforms. Youtube does this very well but only because they are required to by large corporations that can litigate. The average HN user who posts blog content and deletes it is not going to be able to stop it from being distributed. Technically they own the copyright to its content but the end result would be identical to if he or she had announced it to be in public domain. Anybody anywhere could freely share and publish its content on platforms without any consequences unless you notify the platform with DMCA notice and it would be largely up to the discretion of the platform to comply or not as many hosting services explicitly advertise such "bulletproof" hosting. Your own take on what's moral and not has no bearing here since we don't know how the author feels about his work being shared. Yeah I get it that he has copyright to it but its not exactly enforceable on the internet.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    The scale of the Internet makes it, in the general case, impossible to prevent such re-hosting somewhere, at some level of publicity. Of course, as per the laws of most countries it is also a copyright violation and the copyright holder can absolutely sue for such behavior, with penalties ranging from a legal obligation to cease to host the content to damages.
    - bitwize 4y ago
      I think _why is only slightly more likely to sue over these materials than William Gibson is to sue over the text of Agrippa, the "ephemeral poem" whose text was recovered and sent all over the internet shortly after its release.
qbasic_forever 4y ago
No _why still owns the copyright on them and if you try to republish them in violation of any license they put on them (like requiring attribution, etc.) then you are in violation of their copyright and the law. The files and such may live forever, but your ability to publish them, reproduce them, etc. is only allowed if you were granted a license to do so.. i.e. if _why published them under a permissive or open source license.
- jopperdoo 4y ago
  You’re explaining this to someone who undoubtedly knows that, and is making a different point than you think (which is that it doesn’t matter). We all know what copyright is. We all know nobody cares online, too. Those of us who remember the work when published originally also know that you’re making an argument that _why would hate you making, and that they consciously chose to avoid through how they published. I can tell how you’re arguing here that you don’t remember or didn’t know _why’s preferences, which is itself somewhat disrespectful. Stick to the respect, which is an interesting thought to consider, and spare the copyright litigation. It’s honestly tedious.
  - qbasic_forever 4y ago
    No one other than _why can say what their intentions and desires for their works are. The exact same argument you're making is what someone who would steal _why's work and charge money to republish it would make. Imagine if someone ganked the poignant guide to ruby and it became a NYT bestseller... can they just say "oh this is what _why would have wanted, for more people to read this" and walk away with all the profits? Copyright is there for a reason, to protect the owner of a work. If _why chooses to do so they can go after anyone republishing their work for money or not.
    - enneff 4y ago
      That’s totally different to republishing something for free.
    - Aeolun 4y ago
tomcam 4y ago
I agree with you morally but legally you are completely wrong of course. Anything you originate is owned by you, at least in the United States

UncleOxidant 4y ago

Are we sure _why isn't somehow involved in this?

that_guy_iain 4y ago
It's a pretty good guess, he has been found, reached out to, etc. He just wants to move on from that time in his life. So it must feel really weird to him that people go to so much trouble to keep his old texts alife. It's like the whole _why thing is now completely separate to him and it's now about the idea of him and people care more about the idea of _why. It kinda feels like making a tribute site/song/whatever to your first love years a decade later.

MatthiasPortzel 4y ago

Did _why take them offline because he didn’t want anyone to read them? I thought it was more like a book going out of publication—there’s no desire from the author that people should stop reading it, just that it’s out of the author’s hands. I don’t know if _why ever expressed a desire that people shouldn’t go back and read his writing.

WorldMaker 4y ago
It is assumed but not proven that _why's final thoughts about killing that pseudonym are captured in CLOSURE [1]. There's a lot of different takeaways from that and other contemporary writings of _why. Some of them are that _why wished to pursue the Right to Be Forgotten, not just in the GDPR terminology sense, but in a "Last Chance to See" existential way. Those impressions yield that _why watched the internet transition from "pseudonyms are fine and ephemeral" to "everyone knows your real name and pseudonyms are permanent fixtures in the modern internet" and tried as hard as possible to kill everything about that pseudonym as Performance Art. As a reminder of an internet long gone. As a reminder of a Right to be Forgotten. From that perspective, this archive is maybe a bit of putting a Banksy into the Louvre. It's out of context, it's maybe against the artist's wishes, it's kind of weird and over-pedestalizing a legendary figure. (Arguably _why's last stand failed to account for that little last bit, that human tendency even older than the internet of myth making and legend building. As this shows, as the history of mentions of _why on HN alone every few months shows, legends loom large in culture and _why was already a part of the programming legendarium before he tried to murder that pseudonym.) [1] https://github.com/steveklabnik/CLOSURE/raw/master/CLOSURE.pdf https://github.com/steveklabnik/CLOSURE/raw/master/CLOSURE.p...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
LukeShu 4y ago
> there’s no desire from the author that people should stop reading it, just that it’s out of the author’s hands If it were just his own servers that lapsed, sure. But he actively deleted his GitHub repos.

andrew_ 4y ago

The internet is forever, as they say.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]