Maybe I'm out of touch with HN, but kudos to Medium. I delete the article for a reason, why should someone read it years later (regardless of the website or format.) It's my article
I'm not sure I understand the question. As it is now, the vast majority of my transgressions in real life disappear into a memory hole. What makes the internet so special in that regard? You want there to be a permanent digital record of people's mistakes, why? So that those best at hiding their defects can get ahead? Why is that desirable?
And yet the same community that insists the internet act as a permanent, immutable and irrevocable platform for "judging honesty" tends to object when intelligence agencies, law enforcement and employers use their data for just that purpose.
Even if it were the case that one could only judge a person's honesty and accuracy from the "track record" of content published to the web that can be traced to their identity, this assumes that all such content is unbiased and factual, and that any interpretation of that content would also be unbiased and factual, but that isn't true.
The combination of right to be forgotten and GDPR practically mandate that this be the case and, as others have pointed out, in the pre-internet era there would often be no record, unless it had hit the print media. Most criminal offences are expunged (at least in the UK) from your criminal record after a number of years, so why should the internet be allowed to keep a permanent record after your debt to society has been paid?
For sure, although we definitely strayed into moral territory. Even limiting ourselves to authors though, that's a concept whose meaning is radically different nowadays (when it means anyone who can type - including on a touchscreen - and knows how to hit the publish button on Medium/Wordpress/Tumblr or wherever) to what it was in the past, when it meant having to go through at least some amount of gatekeeping at the relevant publication.
Would you really want some sort of naively politicised rant that you wrote as a teen and no longer believe to affect your ability to get a job in your mid-thirties? Would that even be fair? Of course not. Yet that's absolutely realistic in a digital world that forgets nothing and where permanent and total erasure isn't an option.
(To be honest, age isn't particularly a factor here: over a period of a couple of decades anyone's beliefs can change quite substantially, and plenty do. Granted, plenty also don't, but entrenchment is a choice, even if one made passively).
When you write a piece, if you want to delete it so that no one else can read it, it should be your right. Unless of course you're a journalist and you have a duty to integrity or something like that, but I'm talking about people like you and me who might decide one day that they do not like what they wrote anymore.
Your property is the copy on your computer(s) and the right to control who can make more copies. Once you choose to make a copy and transmit it to someone else (perhaps as a response to a HTTP GET request), that copy becomes their property. Your property rights end at the first sale[1]. If you don't want someone to own a copy of your article, don't give it to them or get them to agree to a contract[2].
[2] A TOS is not a contract. If you want to use a contract, make your offer, wait for someone to understand and accept it before you send them a copy of your article.
>>Once you choose to make a copy and transmit it to someone else (perhaps as a response to a HTTP GET request), that copy becomes their property.
Has anyone tried your argument in a copyright case? Say, I access a NYT article, and according to your reasoning it becomes mine the moment their site show it to me. If it's mine I can publish and monetize it.
Yes, you can[1][2] monetize (resell) your copy. You do not have the right to make new copies. This ability is granted explicitly[3] in 17 U.S. Code § 109 (a):
>> [...] the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title, or any person authorized by such owner, is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord. [...]
[1] In some situations there may be additional limitations of your rights. (e.g. performance of a copyright-protected work, which technically creates a new derivative work)
[2] I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice. Consult a real lawyer for actual legal advice.
You are not a lawyer and that's obvious, too bad you try to act like one with citations and outlandish statements.
If I post an article on mysite.org on "free trade" and you think you can archive it and copy and re-distribute it for eternity, you better think it again. The implied license is to read the article from my site, for as long as it is posted there--in MY site. Now, if I become a US President and someone has a copy from 45 years ago, that's different.
> you think you can archive it and copy and re-distribute it for eternity
Did you read my post? I specifically said you couldn't.
>> You do not have the right to make new copies.
Copy rights are separate from your property rights related to your copy of a work.
> You are not a lawyer
Yes, although I have been studying copyright issues since the early 1990s. I'm not saying anything remotely controversial in current interpretations of copyright law.
Incidentally, a new interpretation that is slowly being accepted by courts is misuse of copyright[1]. Based on the older patent misuse, the idea is having a copyright only grants rights related to creating new copies of a work. Claiming that copyright somehow also grants you other totally unrelated right can result in the court preventing the copyright holder from enforcing their copyright[2]. Relying on misinformation about copyright can have serious consequences.
> too bad you try to act like one
You're seeing what you want to see. Providing references to what you're talking about is encouraged on HN.
