Don't confuse authorship with ownership. Once something is placed on the servers, whoever has rights to the servers gets to decide what is done with what is stored there. As they present it to the public through this website, so it becomes accessible to and manipulable by the public. As they make it possible and permissible for us to edit what we add to the site, so we have the right to do so. Since they still have the original text saved, even if it is edited off the website, so they have the right to repost it. You, meanwhile, have the right to copy it and post it elsewhere. The only really ethical restriction on all this is the necessity for proper attribution.

That's where authorship comes in: you have the right to be given credit for your writings. Others have the responsibility of attributing your writings to you.

The only real question in whether or not to re-post what "X" has attempted to remove is whether or not those who have the management rights to the backup copies respect his wishes. Such respect for his wishes need have no connection with any sense of "ownership" of or "rights" to the material he authored. His only real claim on us, in terms of his rights, is to be credited with authorship.

Basically, all it comes down to is a question of preference.


CopyWrite Chad Perrin

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