2019-10-28 - Ephemera, or the Consciousness of Forgetting
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I've seen some discussion of the question of archiving the
gopherverse. Solderpunk (as is their wont) wrote a lengthy and
thoughtful piece [1] which I strongly recommend reading.
(Incidentally, and as an aside - I've never heard of "the civil
right" in this context, and I don't really understand the usage.
Civil, from civilis, refers to society, and to public life. The
concept of civil rights derives from that into the 1600s, and
refers to those rights natural to people which are restrained only
insofar as necessary for the public good. "The civil right", in
that context, makes no sense to me)
Some of the commentary on solderpunk's piece has shown, of course,
divided opinion. There are those who claim that all statements made
in public are, res ipsa loquitor, statements which become the
property of the public. This claim is as nonsensical as it is
legally ridiculous.
By making a statement in a public place, I do not pass ownership of
the content I have "performed" to anyone else, I retain that
ownership, it is mine, noone elses. I may have chosen to permit a
certain group of people to read it, or hear it; I may have
restricted that audience in a number of ways, be it my followers on
social media, or the small but highly-regarded phlog audience; I
may have structured my comments to that audience, such as using
jargon on a mailing list which, when quoted out of context, can
appear to mean something quite different; I may just have posted a
stupid or ill-judged photo to my friends.
In each of those cases, it is specious to claim that I have given
ownership of my posts to the public, forever, without hope of
retrieval. It is not the case that I have surrendered my right to
privacy, forever, to all 7.7bn inhabitants of this earth.
To take an apposite and contemporary example - Katie Hill, when she
consented to her husband taking intimate photos, did not consent,
nor could she consent, to those photos being spread all over
various websites, ending her political career.
In much the same way, I reacted strongly when I realised that posts
I had made on my phlog were appearing on *google* thanks to that
site's indexing of gopher portals. I did not ever consent to
content I made available over port 70 becoming the property of
rapacious capitalists.
I hold the same view regarding archiving of gopher sites. If
confronted with such a putative archivist, I would state, in the
simplest possible terms:
"Who the hell made you the arbiter of this?"
Sysdharma posits an archival tag for publication [2] a proposal
that is not without merit. I think, however, that the most
appropriate solution is to have a robots.txt file for each
gopherhole, one which allows the content creator the right to say:
"You can archive the posts in the folder marked public/, but that's
all."
The content creator, after all, is the *only* person who has the
right to make that decision, they are the only one who knows the
audience they are willing to share something with, and the only
ones who are the arbiter of that.
Does this mean that some things will be lost? Yes.
Is this a price worth paying? Absolutely.
We cannot repeat, again, the errors which led us to the modern web.
We must not permit the same brigading, the same context-free
quoting, the same mis- and dis-information which the web has
facilitated. We can start doing that by protecting the rights of
content creators.
Content which is ephemeral is not lost. If it has caused a reaction
within us, then it has served a greater purpose than a thousand
thousand archives of everything which has ever been. When you read
a phlog post or other post, remembering that it may be gone
tomorrow does not impact your enjoyment of the post. If the post
has meaning for you, then reach out to the creator, talk to them,
perhaps they have more to say which may be as meaningful, or as
important.
For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only
thought love
-- Carl Sagan
[1]:
gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/~solderpunk/phlog/the-individual-archivist-and-ghosts-of-gophers-past
[2]:
gopher://sdf.org/1/users/sysdharma/phlog/./2019.10.28
