elspethdixon | Bonfire of the Digital Vanities

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Bonfire of the Digital Vanities

[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).

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

"Wise, yes. Possible? Hell no. There are times when I behave in similar ways to the character in my icon. Other times, I'm housebroken. *cackle*"

See icon. *snurfle*

I wonder if the OP got completely scared away. If she's lucky, she at least turned off comment notification.

(also here via metafandom)

IAWTC.

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.

Though in this day and age there is absolutely no reason for a book to be out of print. The publisher could offer e-books or print-on-demand, which would mean they wouldn't have to put out money up front as they would have before, if they don't think it will sell more than a few copies here and there.

What about "I didn't want people reading it anymore because it's a horrid piece of Mary Sue crap that I wrote when I didn't know any better"? (ref. also what thecaelum said (http://elspethdixon.livejournal.com/113253.html?thread=379749#t379749))

I think the difference in opinion here is about who has the right to judge whether a piece of writing deserves to be publicly available - the writer or the readers (which, incidentally, is another reason why your "putting sellotape over manuscripts in the Library of Congress" analogy falls short - said manuscripts don't have a still-living author).

My view on it is that people have every right to do whatever with the stuff they put on the internet - including taking it off the internet - while you have the right to save said stuff to your harddrive for private re-reading. If you haven't saved in time, it's gone; and the author has no more obligation to make it available again than George Lucas has an obligation to put the Holiday Special on DVD because you didn't record that embarrasing thing (or get a copy off the web) when you could.

I don't understand. Are you talking about the people to whom the fic is recced, or people who are doing the reccing? Because if YOU are reccing a fic and have a copy on your HD, this solves your problem... if the fic is gone, you just email it out to people who are interested in seeing it.

If you are talking about being on the receiving end of a dead recommendation... well, we've all been there. I've never lost tears over the lost of a story I have never even read. It happens. I just move on to the next thing, no harm done.

I firmly believe that if you love a story enough that you think you will want to recommend it in the future, save it in your own personal archives. If you have the opportunity to buy a book before it goes out of print and don't do so, you have no one to blame but yourself if you go later to and find it's already been taken off the market. Similarly with fic. To read it means that it was available publicly at SOME TIME. If you assume that all archives except your own are unreliable, for many reasons (and yours will only be reliable if you back it up appropriately), then you will never lose fics. This I can promise you.

*over the loss

*embarrassing

To typo is human. ;)

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.

Wow, really? The only times I've ever known people to use it, they were searching for ld favorites.

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.

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.

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,

*nods* Because that's closer to what I originally meant (the first draft of this went up at something like 3am my time). I didn't really mean that fic-deletion is worthy of eternal damnation--more like that it angers me partially because I've been told so many times that removing information from public circulation is BadBadWrongUnprofessionalEvil.

While I don't have the time (being at home for the weekend on a dial-up connection) to respond individually to every comment, I've added further thoughts/clarification to the original post, and edited it a bit to tone down some of the "typed it at 3am while really angry" hyperbole.

And I'll second the thanks for being civilized about disagreeing with me/each other. While I've not read all the comments, it looks like people are at least debating politely and not slinging insults, which is a relief, since seeing the 60+ comments notification made me fear starting a flame war or turning up on fandom_wank.

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?

Hmmm. As an author you don't have the right to ask (or tell) other people to remove copies of yourwork from their personal archives. But if a public archive provides the option of removing your work if you want to? Then yeah, you have the right to do that, just like you have the right to remove your work from your own personal archives or any archives you have authorised to publish your work.

You can't apply real life analogies to online situations because cyberspace is a completely different space with different rules and possibilities to those of the corporeal world.

I don't think I argue about rights anywhere, here...? Of course it's your right to remove things. I don't think the OP said it wasn't either. Just that she found it annoying and insulting.

And we completely agree on cyberspace being different from "real" space, which is pretty much my point. You can burn every hard copy of a book you can get your hands on in real space, and wipe its existance off the face of the earth. But it is very naive to think you can do the same with information shared online. Once you let go of it into the big www, it's *not* yours anymore, simply because there's no way to take it back.

I don't think anyone ever suggested it was possible to erase all trace of a fic from the internet either, did they? That is neither here nor there when it comes to taking down those archived items that are under your control, which things archived by the Wayback Machine are, as well as personal archives and authorised archives. That is entirely the author's prerogative, and it isn't an insult to stop providing a free service you no longer wish to provide. It's annoying, sometimes, sure. But so is sunburn, which is why you take steps to prevent it from affecting you; if you love a story that much, save a copy.

I don't know what anyone suggested about removing all copies of stories from the intertnet; the discussion got huge and I haven't read all the posts. *G*

I think we're arguing semantics and mood more than anything here- the OP said she felt insulted, which is fine, she can feel however she wants. I get angry and frustrated. And now that I have been OL long enough, I certainly do save copies.

As for "rights", and "shoulds"- we can agree to disagree.

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*

I'm talking about people on both sides of the problem, because I've been on both sides. This isn't something that occasionally happens. I confront dead links constantly, and I try to change them when I can, but usually the person has no copies left on the internet.
There are some very good reasons for people to take fic down, but when it's just an attack of "I'm no good; I used to suck as a writer," I think the writers should consider something besides their own feelings. Van Gogh, at least, had mental illness to explain burning his paintings. What's their problem?

I just move on to the next thing, no harm done.
It's not going to harm me personally, of course not. It's just fanfic. But I think there's a real harm to history. Look at how many pore over Farmer Joe Blow's letters home to the folks to find out about life on the prairie in 1819 or whatever. We have to stop treating internet culture as disposable. It's the record we're making of our time period.

Because if YOU are reccing a fic and have a copy on your HD, this solves your problem... if the fic is gone, you just email it out to people who are interested in seeing it.
It's honestly never occured to me to give out copies of other people's stories. It seems like a breech of trust to pass people's work around without their permission, even if I don't agree with their reasons for making it unavailable. What's the difference between that and archiving something without the author's permission?

As far as not being able to find a fic that's been recced to you, it's well and dandy to "just move on" to the next thing, if there is a next thing. But I've been on the internet now for over 12 years. For some of my older fandoms so much fic has been taken down that it's almost impossible to find a single story, even though there used to be hundreds. Neither I nor anyone else could possibly be responsible for archiving an entire fandom.

It's not that I think that people who take their fic down are bad somehow, but I do think it's a real problem with consequences that can't just be shrugged off.

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.

I've been out of my parents' house for years now, actually. That incident was some time ago.

It's hardly 'screwing other fans over' to not allow them to read some crap fic I wrote years ago -- they'll never know what they're missing, omg.

My website's actually been back up (under a different name and domain) for some time, and it's got a robots.txt on it, oh yes indeed, and I plan on leaving it there. (With of course, the caveat that I can take my website down whenever I like -- or are you going to start protesting me doing that, too?)

I searched the Wayback Machine for my former website and was unable to find it, so I guess even back in my early days in fandom I knew the power of robots.txt.

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!

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Bonfire of the Digital Vanities

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re: deleting past work