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

[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]

Bull. It still belongs to the author, just as a published writer's work doesn't cease to belong to him or her after it's published. Of course, once posted or published in any way, it's out there and can't be made to truly disappear---but the owner of the material is still free to do with it what he or she wishes.

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

A published piece of work- art, writing, or otherwise, ceases to "belong" to the creator once it is put in the public view. The only rights the creator retains are those of copy. The right to pass it on to friends, stand on a street corner and say it sucks, or roll it up and smoke it, belong to those who have purchased the work. Or, in the world of fanfic, the readers.

If I save a fanfic on my harddrive, the author has no more right to tell me to delete it than the author of a book has to tell me to set it on fire once I have bought it. You share something with the world wide web, you accept the consequences. And those consequences include that it may, in fact, become a permanent accounting of how you used to spend your time. Why do you think people use psuedonyms for godsake?

[ex-iuls701.livejournal.com]

You seem to have entirely missed my point, so I'll restate it: You have no rights to anyone else's posts; if someone wishes to delete his or her work, he or she is free to do this without consulting you.

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

No, I didn't miss your point, I disagreed with it. Because as much as you would like it to be true, does not make it so.

And I can see we'll never agree, so feel free to carry on the debate with the many choices of people above. I'm all done.

[iulia_linnea.livejournal.com]

At least you understand yourself enough to illustrate your own fallacy. *shakes head*

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

Okay!

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

Sure. And what the OP said is that she finds it frustrating when the author not only refuses to continue to share a work already made public, (takes it off their own webspace, for example) but also goes to the added step of ensuring that no one else can share it either (ie removing it from automated web archival sites). Additionally, she said it felt insulting.

I agree, and I also add that I think it's foolish and naive. The author can't prevent someone from keeping a story on their harddrive, and then sharing it with a million friends. That's the consequence of technology.

Is it polite, ethical, etc? I'm not making a moral judgement. I'm just stating a fact- if you put something on the web, it isn't yours to do with what you like anymore. Once you hit send, it's too late for regrets.

[thecaelum.livejournal.com]

I get the frustration, but I'm not in sync with calling people out on this one and condemning them for it. That may be because this is something I have done, and as such, it is a little difficult to be neutral on this one.

There can be any number of valid reasons behind de-archiving stories and/or and blocking robots. Some of that is just routine website maintenance.

I pulled several stories down from my website several months ago. Some time later, I got a few emailed complaints about my site not working because people would click on links on the Wayback version of the fiction menu and it would direct them to pages no longer available on my personal site. So I blocked the Wayback Machine from archiving pages at my website to avoid that confusion.

I fail to see the comparison between the above actions and publicly destroying valuable copies of historic literature in a statement against the decadence of literacy. As flattering as it would be to view my work that way, that's really not an accurate view of it. This is more boxing up old stories that are no longer relevant or useful to the purpose of the archive itself. They aren’t completely gone, but I do hope they'll be forgotten.

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

I wasn't the one who made the comparison to great works of literature, so I can't speak to it.

As for serving the purpose of an archive, I totally get that. I've taken several of my own, older stories down from my personal archive. But I wouldn't ask anyone else to remove those stories from their archives, if they'd previously asked for permission to post them, nor would I go through the trouble of backing the work out of auto archives, like the Wayback.

I think the difficulty we're having here is between Can and Should. Of course you CAN, and who am I to tell you that you *shouldn't* try to wipe the stories you wrote off the face of the earth? But. And it's a big, er, but, you also can't, and shouldn't, fault someone for being very annoyed when you take away a toy which you gave them, just because it no longer suits your purpose for them to have it.

And again, I think it's naive to think that *anything* we put into webspace can be erased forever. Believe me, I feel your pain around wanting old stories to be forgotten. I just try to look at their continued existance as a way to measure how far I've (hopefully) come. Or at least get a good laugh from.

[thecaelum.livejournal.com]

I wasn't the one who made the comparison to great works of literature, so I can't speak to it.

Absolutely, and it was not my intent to state otherwise. That was a part of my issue with the original poster's stance.

Can versus Should is more an issue of how far one is willing to go to accommodate the wishes of readers versus their own wishes. I'm not faulting anyone for enjoying my stories. That's very flattering, and in the case of these older stories, something of a bittersweet flattery. But flattery all the same.

I'm more faulting this particular case of someone stating that persons who choose to remove stories and clean up broken links are being malicious and should be condemned.

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

"are being malicious and should be condemned"

Hm. I guess that wasn't my interpretation of the OP. I read a frustrated rant by someone who takes archiving, and storytelling, pretty seriously. I identified with her frustration.

And I wish she would come on back and discuss. Stupid real-life having. ;)

[mawaridi.livejournal.com]

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.

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

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.

[mawaridi.livejournal.com]

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.

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

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.

[thecaelum.livejournal.com]

While I disagree with these ideas of ownership, I don't find that ownership equates to availability. Please let me know if I am misunderstanding what you're saying here.

What I see being discussed is how available a story is for general reading, not who owns the story. In terms of ownership, the person who wrote it has that. He or she may post it or remove it as they wish. In terms of investment, the readers carry a large part of that.

Example, I purchase a book. I read it, love it, and carry it around with me until I wear it out. I wish to purchase a new copy, but I find that the book is no longer being offered in stores. Does that writer have an obligation to provide me with a new copy? Absolutely not. Do I have every right to seek out another copy from someone else? Absolutely yes.

When a writer yanks a story from a public site, this doesn't mean that it ceases to exist, or even that it should. It means that it is no longer available from the person who wrote it.

Reposted to fix a confusing typo. Sorry about that.

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

NP. See above. Thanks for engaging in debate without moral righteousness or condescension. Much appreciated.

[thecaelum.livejournal.com]

You are very welcome, and thank you for doing the same. It is equally appreciated.

[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,

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

*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.