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.
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Date: 2006-10-28 09:43 am (UTC)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.