Bonfire of the Digital Vanities

[elspethdixon]

[Edit] Please take future comments/discussion to This more public version of the post on fanficrants This edition is really just me throwing a temper tanrum in my lj. That one has more discussion in comments, including meta and discussion by other posters.

I've accepted that a great many fic authors will willfully pull their fics from the net, rendering current readers incapable of re-reading them and future readers incapable of finding them (and, most importantly, making it so I can't read them), but for the love of all that's holy, people, don't go one step further and make it so the Wayback Machine can't archive your webpages. Most especially don't go back and retroactively make it so that the Wayback Machine can no longer pull up your old webpage with now deleted stories that was available via the Wayback Machine six months ago.

Yes, it's possible for you to have your pages excluded from/removed from the Wayback Machine, but just because you can use robots.txt doesn't mean you should, unless there are pressing legal reasons. I personally find it more than just annoying. I've come to realize, as I searched for a particular author's fic this evening with steadily mounting irritation, that I actually find it offensive. Not just on a personal level (as a sort of passive-agressive "fuck you" aimed at other fans), but on a professional level, as both a history student and an archivist-in-training. You are essentially not just making your work unarchivable, you are doing the online equivalent of going into an archive and removing and destroying part of its contents. I'm overstating things out of annoyance (well, out of frustrated and irrational rage), here, but the same basic principle applies. You're destroying fannish history, removing your work from the fandom equivalent of the literary landscape, and, in the case of small fandoms, sometimes cutting the amount of fic in the fandom in half. And all because you don't like your story anymore?

There is a special place in Archivists' Hell reserved for those who destroy information solely from personal prejudice/preference, where they will spend eternity beside people who put cellotape on 19th century documents, people who write on original manuscripts in ink, computer techs who mass-deleted months of archived emails in order to free up server space--and without saving copies--after the records management department specifically asked them not to, and Stephen Joyce.

And really, ask yourself why you're even deleting the fics in the first place. Even if you've left fandom, or moved on to a new fandom, the readers in your old fandom are still there (and if you want to disavow contact with said old fandom, that's what a new pseudonym is for). Even if you've published an original novel drawing heavily on said fics, that doesn't mean you have to destroy the evidence of your creative process--when a painter finishes a painting, does he then turn around and burn all of his sketches? Especially if he's already shown them to people who enjoyed looking at them? Unless your reason is something along the lines of "my boss found out that I write fanfiction, and now I have to remove my NC-17-rated Harry Potter chan from public view before the state school system finds it and fires me," or "Anne Rice sent me a C&D letter," I don't buy it as valid. (Or you could make that "fail to understand why you'd want to destroy your own hard work and deprive other of the ability to see it").

The term "Bonfire of the Vanities" mentioned in this rant's title is a reference to a mass cultural/intellectual purge practiced in 15th century Florence, wherein a religious zealot named Savonarola bullied and persuaded the people of Florence into burning their sinful or luxorious possessions, from fine clothing to jewelry to any books Savonarola's followers didn't approve of. Among the "shamefull" things consigned to the flames was a collection of Botticelli's sketches and oil paintings, paintings that would be worth a fortune today, and that art historians would weep to get their hands on, which were laid on the fire by Botticelli himself, because Savonarola had threatened him with hellfire and social disgrace if he didn't destroy his work and all evidence of it.

Still want to erase that 200k fic from the face of the internet forever? Fine, but the Special Archives Hell is waiting.


And the really personally irritating thing is, the author whose no-longer-online fics sparked this epiphany of annoyed hatred is one I'd previously enjoyed reading a great deal. Now, though, every time I see her name, I will picture that original printing of the Confederate consitution I saw in the NARA labs, the one covered in browned cellotape that has bonded with the paper and turned it brittle and transparent, and will wince in mental agony. I'm sure she's a perfectly nice person and that I'm over-reacting and being unfair, but my subconscious has now irrevocably associated her with wanton destruction of historical documents.

[2nd Edit] This seems to have started up its own bonfire of wank. Since I'm very busy with grad school right now, I'm not going to be responding to any more comments (aside from the responses at fanficrants), but feel free to debate with/agree with/argue with each other.

Oh, nevermind--I can take three minutes away from that research project.

This post was originally typed up at three a.m. or so, right after I finished screaming profanity at my computer screen after a fourty minute search failed to turn up evidence of a fic I'd previously read in a library computer lab (via waybacking it from a rec) and wanted to track down and save. Hence the seriously confrontational language and hyperbole (hey, I left the "God damn motherfucking bastard sonuvabitch where the hell is it!" bit out. Well, until now). I won't say which fic and which author, because that would make this whole thing into a personal attack, when it's really meant to be more of a generalized temper-tantrum.

I found it annoying as all get out, obviously, and the principle of the thing--not just deleting one's own personal website or journal, which is something I can understand (sometimes family or cowrokers find your lj. Sometimes websites get to be a pain to keep up and/or you're tired of paying server fees), but going back and erasing it from archives run by somebody else, and from digital preservation efforts--struck me as going beyond just the digital equivalent of taking a book out of print. Removing fic from the wayback machine as well as from your webpage is like pulling your book from print and then asking the public library to take it out of circulation. Unless there are real-life legal reasons for it (C&D letters, being outed to one's boss, etc.), it seems prima-donna-like and inconsiderate of one's fellow fans. At least, it does in situations like the one that prompted this, where the author is still active in another fandom (which argues against there being real-life "about to lose my job for writing slash" reasons behind it).

Comments

[seanchai.livejournal.com]

Here, here! I can sort of understand deleting stuff if it's old and embaressing, but really, chances are damned good that anyone looking through the wayback machine is looking 'cause they've read the fic before, liked it, and want to read it again.

(And which author? It's entirely possible that I may have whatever you're looking for saved to disk somewhere.)

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

Multiple authors--the resentment has been growing for years and finally just exploded. There seems to have been a vast purge of data at the Internet Archive recently (maybe this thing about being able to block archiving with robots is new?).

[ravenclaw-devi.livejournal.com]

chances are damned good that anyone looking through the wayback machine is looking 'cause they've read the fic before, liked it, and want to read it again. (emphasis mine)

Not necessarily so. They may be looking for vintage badfic to boggle at.

[watersword]

You have just said everything I have been half-assedly thinking for the last few weeks. Thanks. This is the analogy I've been groping towards. (Also, wow, you didn't give The Lord of the James Estate his Full Title! He is Stephen James Joyce!)

I asked once why reworking a fanfic story for publication means you have to pull the original story, and someone who's done that told me "it's not logic that matters. It's business. And it's bad business for an editor to spend money to buy a story that, in a slightly different form, is available for free somewhere else. Especially if they think they're buying something that's never been published."

That seriously just seems like flimsy reasoning to me. There are plenty of places that will accept previously-published work, for one, and for another, most publishers aren't fanatical about total control over the work unless and until you're Stephen King or Anne Rice or Whoever Bigname Author. You're not making them enough money to be worth the effort.

*sigh*

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

I asked once why reworking a fanfic story for publication means you have to pull the original story, and someone who's done that told me "it's not logic that matters. It's business.

Actually, I can deal with the whole "my publisher made me do it," excuse, because if I can buy the fic as a book, I can still read it, just as I can accept the "I received a C&D letter" one or the "I've been outed at work and need to conceal my fannish activities before I'm fired for writing slash" one. It's the "I just didn't want people reading it anymore because I'm in a new fandom/tired of it/throwing a hissy fit over something that happened at fandom wank/re-using minor plot elements in fics for a new fandom and/or orig fic with completely different characters" that makes me want to scream.

[harkalark.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, a very special hell indeed. Can we also populate it with the marketing jerks who convinced everyone in the 1990s that digitizing something and putting it on a crappy store-bought CD-R suddenly makes it immortal? Ooh, and what about the person who invented those adhesive labels for CDs? They must spend eternity being repeatedly squashed by a CD stomper (http://www.cdstomper.com/).

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

Can we also populate it with the marketing jerks who convinced everyone in the 1990s that digitizing something and putting it on a crappy store-bought CD-R suddenly makes it immortal? They must spend eternity being repeatedly squashed by a CD stomper.

Or they could spend forever reading transcripts of 1930s congressional proceedings on microfilm--"look, this is still legible decades after being photographed, while your CD degraded/became obsolete five years ago!"--until they go blind.

[embroiderama]

I thoroughly agree with this, and I have to semi-OT comment on one thing.

computer techs who mass-deleted months of archived emails in order to free up server space--and without saving copies--after the records management department specifically asked them not to

You want to hear something scary? I *work* in records management, and a few years ago I had a co-worker randomly delete months of my e-mail because she had to work at my desk for a few hours, and the quantity of mail in my inbox irritated her. I was furious, and she acted like I was being irrational. *grrrr*

[herongale]

I think perhaps you would be best served from here on in to save copies of your favourite fics to your personal HD? It might save you lots of irritation. :)

[inalasahl]

What about people who rec fic?

[anidada.livejournal.com]

Word, word, huge freaking word. As a fic reccer in a closed-canon fandom, this sort of thing drives me right up the wall. That, and flocking of previously public fic (esp. when it was for a ficathon, or linked to on a community, and the links thereto are still public!). It's downright rude, is what it is.

Oh, and please add to the Hell list those scumbags who rip out photo pages/illustrated plates from publicly accessible books. >:P

[rachel-martin64.livejournal.com]

There is a special place in Hell reserved for those who do this,

I'm incredulous.

Are you telling fans they have no right to remove their material from internet archives?

In fact, they're going to go to hell for this?

Who are you to decide the validity of another person's reasons for removing his/her material? You are intimately acquainted with each person, then? You are aware of each person's situation? You see all and know all, before you pass judgement like Jesus Christ and send the person to hell?

To decide a person removes his/her fics as a "passive-agressive f*** you aimed at other fans" is absurd. People have their own good reasons for removing material from archives. And they owe you no explanation, no justification, no apology. This stuff doesn't belong to you. It doesn't belong to other fans. It doesn't belong to the nation. It doesn't belong to the ages. It belongs to them.

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

It belongs to the author until the author puts it up in a public place like the internet, capable of sending it to millions of people's homes in two seconds. Then, not so much anymore.

I ain't even touching the Hell bit.

[ex-iuls701.livejournal.com]

I agree with you. elspethdixon and the others are certainly welcome to their opinions, but the sense of entitlement illustrated in this post is something I don't understand at all.

[cordelia_v]

I have to agree with rachel_martin64: the sense of reader entitlement expressed here is staggering.

I'm a historian myself, but I don't feel that the rules of good conduct in archives apply here. In an RL archive, someone has donated a set of sources with the understanding that they'll be preserved there in perpetuity. The Internet is not a public archive, and you aren't implicitly signing an agreement to make something available forever, when you post a story.

The story belongs to the writer. Granted, once it's posted readers can download copies for their own use. If you are really concerned about stories disappearing from the Net, that's what you should do: download a copy. But the author has the right to delete it at any time. It is hers, not yours.

You cannot know or judge why someone might decide to remove her story. To be honest, I get the sense that you don't know (perhaps have never personally experienced?) how many people have RLs that could be seriously damaged if they were exposed as slash fanfic writers. It doesn't have to be your hypothetical example of a public school teacher who was on the verge of being exposed. Although in fact I have known of an author who pulled her stories for exactly that reason. People can and have lost jobs when they were outed as slash writers, lost custody of their children, and other, lesser but still undesirable consequences.

Who are you to know or judge for them, what is an acceptable risk, so that you can continue to read their stories any time you please? Just save the story on your hard drive, for heaven's sake, if you're that worried.

The story belongs to the writer. No one else. She doesn't owe you a thing.

[rachel-martin64.livejournal.com]

I notice the OP has changed the wording of her post from

There is a special place in Hell reserved for those who do this,

to

There is a special place in Archivists' Hell reserved for those who do this,

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

Found via metafandom. (Alas, you are about to have wank.)

But man, oh man. I *Feel* you. Great big word.

[thecaelum.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I have really mixed feelings on this one.

On the one hand, I can sympathize with wanting to read Story X that you've heard good things about, and being frustrated when it is no longer available.

But on the other hand, I've done this supposedly hellbound act of de-archiving my older stories. It wasn't something done as a "as a sort of passive-agressive "fuck you" aimed at other fans."

I did so because I felt that they had no value, and served no purpose. They were not good stories, and many of them were very embarrassing stories. And yes, I get the notion of wanting to have a showcase of progress as a writer. For me, it didn't work that way. These stories were, at the time, the best that I could pull off. They are no longer representative of me, my thoughts on those characters, and my abilities as a writer.

It's a bit like being in a pottery class. When you start the course, your work is pretty dismal. As you learn techniques and improve upon old ones, your work becomes better. At the end of the class, you've got a series of things that you've made, starting with the dismal and ending with the improved. Speaking personally, I'm not interested in saving my lumpy ashtrays, or displaying them. If somebody saw one of those early works and liked it, that's certainly flattering. But I didn't, and my opinion is the one that I deal with on a daily basis.

[iulia_linnea.livejournal.com]

I hate it when a fic I enjoy disappears, but I would never condemn anyone for removing her own work from her own page or journal. You're free to do so, but why not spend the energy with which you're fueling your misplaced sense of entitlement into saving the fics you enjoy?

here via metafandom

[munchkinofdoom.livejournal.com]

This is a phenomenon that I think we can attribute to the internet age. We are not talking about destroying single works of art here. We are talking the equivalent of a book going out of print.

The reason something is removed from the net is irrelevant, just as the reasoning behind allowing a book to go out of print is also irrelevant. It simply happens. But this is not the same as going into a gallery or a private collection, removing, and then destroying an original piece of art or a manuscript.

There are multiple copies of these stories out there, on individual hard-drives and sometimes in locked journals, just as there are copies of out of print books in homes, libraries and second-hand book shops. You simply have to ask around.

What is simply happening, with the removal of stories from from The Wayback Machine and Google search archives etc, is really no different than the decision to no longer keep a book in print.

It is just that, in this day and age of the internet, some, yourself included it would appear, feel that a writer does not have the right to allow his/her work to 'go out of print' for want of a better analogy.

I can't agree with this stand.

Re: here via metafandom

[toxictattoo.livejournal.com]

We are not talking about destroying single works of art here. We are talking the equivalent of a book going out of print.

That's the analogy that I've been looking for. Keith Laumer wrote a beautiful set of books about a character that fascinated me. And frustrated me because for the longest time, the books were out of print. Either I had to try to track them down on ebay and pay premium for a ratty copy, or haunt used book stores, digging through musty boxes hoping to find gold.

It sucked I had to resort to that and it made me mad that I had to go to those extremes. But that is the fact of life for books going out of print.

And now it appears they are being rereleased. Or...at least my karma finally won out and I can start filling in the series gaps

[feelforfaith.livejournal.com]

I agree with you that it is frustrating if a story that used to be accessible publicly is no longer accessible, but I fully support the author's right to control how her stories are distributed. Of course once a story is published on the internet any such control becomes very difficult, but not entirely impossible--as proven in your post.

If, for whatever reason, an author wants to pull her stories from public archives--and this includes the Wayback Machine--she has a right to do so. I do not consider it insulting at all. I consider it the creator's right.

here via metafandom

[somewhatdeluded.livejournal.com]

I think the problem is that an awful lot of people don't understand that their work is being archived. They didn't sign up to participate in the Wayback Machine's archive. One day they realize/someone tells them that their stuff is being saved forever and ever in a public, searchable location, and they suddenly realize that they don't have control over what they write, and that freaks them out. I mean, lots of people have a problem with other people putting their stuff in an online archive without permission, and I think it feels equally violating when you suddenly realize that the internet itself is archiving you.

I work for a company that hosts online academic journals, so it's a big issue for us when a publisher wants to delete an article that's already gone online (retractions are one thing - with a retraction, you put a retraction notice up along with - usually - a reason for retraction. deleting an article is a whole different beast all together.). Deleting that article damages the publication record, and it pisses librarians off. So I certainly understand where you're coming from, but I do think that that archive.org's assumption that everything on da interwebs is free to be archived is kind of...hubristic. I mean, you have to be fairly tech-savvy to know how to block robots, and it isn't like archive.org e-mails you every time it spiders your site.

I have a problem with the archiving of my journal, so I block robots. I don't block robots on other online archives, because I think it's harder to associate archives with my real identity than it is to associate my LJ with my real identity. I recognize that given some of my career goals, it is highly likely that I will someday need to take down my journal, and probable that I will need to take down my fic archives. In the absence of the journal, the potential identifiability of the archive (say, on skyehawke) is significantly lower - not impossible, but low enough that I think that it's probably okay if my archive is still accessible via archive.org. So I'm just not too worried about that for now, though I may find out differently in the future, and I may end up someday needing to delete my fic from the Wayback Machine.

I think the important thing to do as an author is to realize that whatever your feelings about a fic, and whatever your reasons for deleting it, you can't un-write it. You can't make the act of posting it go away. If you have to delete it, you have to understand that a lot of people have probably bookmarked it and enjoyed it. I think it's important to save all your fic, even if it's just on a burned cd in your closet gathering dust, and I think it's important to - out of respect for your fellow internet denizens - try to make the deletion as un-impactful as possible. This means that if you can, you give public notice ("hey, I'm about to delete all my fic. Save it in the next week if you want it."); if you can, you preserve the path and make it go to some sort of deletion notice ("This fic has been deleted for legal reasons. Questions? E-mail me at me@foo.com."); and that, if you possibly can, you then provide the fic, by e-mail, to other people, on the agreement that it will not be reposted online.

It's absolutely the right of the author to control how her work is distrubuted, but there's a certain level of respect for readers that I think is necessary, too. Just all part of playing nicely on this here internet.

addendum!

[somewhatdeluded.livejournal.com]

Also, the bit you mentioned about not blocking robots except for pressing legal reasons? That's a little bit odd. Robots are terrible from a website maintenence point of view, because they can - in some cases, dramatically - increase the load on a site. Not to mention that anyone who writes fanfic - especially erotic fanfic - and doesn't think they're operating in a legal gray area is likely someday going to be very, very unpleasantly surprised. I'd start from the assumption that anyone blocking robots has a very good reason to do so, legal or otherwise.

Personal archives - i.e., a reader's hard drive - are one thing, but not wanting to participate in a public archive for one reason or another and taking steps to do so seems perfectly acceptable to me. If you don't want to participate in personal archives, well then, for God's sake, don't post the story. That one isn't likely to get much sympathy at all from me.

[dartmouthtongue.livejournal.com]

I agree that once you throw your fic out there you should be prepared for people to critique it, download it, print it out and burn it in a bonfire. However, it doesn't mean that the author suddenly has lost the capacity to do the same fucking thing.

You dig?

[elance.livejournal.com]

It's fortunate for you I didn't know about the Wayback Machine in 2002 when my parents found out I wrote slash and literally attempted to brainwash me into believing that slash was ohmygosh so wrong and evil, when things got so bad I I had to hand over my lists to alternate moderatorship, when my friends went through my livejournal and locked everything (and even then I ended up switching ljs), when the question of taking my website down and my fic out of archives wasn't even a question, it was 'how fast can you do it?'

Yeah, really fortunate, because otherwise I would have removed them from there, too. Luckily my parents never accessed them through the Wayback Machine, as I don't think they knew about it either.

Simply put, your right to read my fanfic on the interwebs stops exactly at the point where I decide to erase it. I can't control you downloading my fic, but expecting it to be there for forever and all eternity takes a sense of selfish entitlement that's really out of control.

*is tempted to go now and have her stuff taken out of the wayback machine just for spite*

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

Please don't screw other fans over just because you're mad at me for expressing an opinion. If you were truly forced to destroy all of your work because of your parents, you may want to recover copies of it someday when you no longer have to love under their roof and follow their rules.

re: deleting past work

[hohaiyee.livejournal.com]

I hesitate to speak as I have yet written anything good or even anything much, but when I finally get there, I know I would look back upon my journey with embarrassment. I can not see myself deleting past works however, when I get there, I'll have readied, this disclaimer; "I was young and drunk on whiskey", see it and get over it. The past doesn't have to be perfect!