Google deleted the blog of the writer Dennis Cooper and the results of his work for 14 years

Backup - for wimps

June 27, 2016 Dennis Cooper opened the browser and entered the address of his blog, which for 14 years has been hosting on Blogspot. For a writer and artist, this is not just a personal diary, but also a personal gallery. Here he has been posting his books, reviews and works of art in digital form since 2002. Special pride of the author is a GIF-novel in the form of a large number of sequential animations. The novel was released in January 2015 and was favorably received by literary critics .

On Monday, June 27, Dennis scored the address denniscooper-theweaklings.blogspot.com . After that, he froze for a while, trying to comprehend the inscription on the screen.

Blog has been removed

Sorry, the blog at denniscooper-theweaklings.blogspot.com has been removed. This address is not available for new blogs.
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^{Did you expect to see your blog here? See: ' I can't find my blog on the Web, where is it? '}

The blog has been removed.

Fourteen-year art project ceased to exist. As it turned out, Google has completely deleted the artist’s account from its service, including the Gmail inbox.

As usual in such cases, Google does not bother to explain the reasons for deleting the account, does not provide technical explanations and does not allow you to make a backup copy of the information before it is destroyed. However, the possibility remains that the information is still stored on the servers, so the chance of data recovery has not yet been lost.

In his blog, Dennis Cooper published literary recordings, studies, photographs, and other works of digital art, such as the aforementioned GIF-novel Zac's Haunted House , Kiddiepunk, 2015 and the Zac's Control Panel ) in 2016. Although the writer has an official website , but it was in the blog that he published fresh work and communicated with readers. In the artforum.com commentary , Dennis said that his new GIF novel, which was scheduled for publication this fall, was also posted (and kept) in a blog. As is common with artists, this was the only copy of the original work.

Cooper repeatedly tried to contact Google by phone and email, but received only a standard "violation of the terms of user agreement" reply, no detailed explanation.

The writer reported a problem on his Facebook page. He informed readers that in the near future blog updates should not be expected.

Over the past weeks since the blocking, the story has resonated, so now Dennis Cooper has several helpers who help sort out the situation. Among them are ordinary employees of Google, as well as a French volunteer lawyer who specializes in intellectual property issues, and is now trying to contact a Google lawyer.

Under the terms of the user agreement, Google has the right at any time to suspend the provision of services to users of the Blogspot blogger platform, which it acquired in 2003. The same is written in the terms of the user agreement service Gmail, and the company is not obliged to explain the reasons for its decision.

However, Dennis Cooper with his lawyer and an army of sympathetic readers are not going to give up. True, so far their efforts have been fruitless. Insiders at Google told the writer that the company was conducting some kind of internal investigation about his blog, but it is extremely difficult to get information.

Cooper's lawyer eventually got the company to start another internal investigation regarding the removal of the writer's blog and mailbox, so that Google launched the third internal investigation . But again, the company’s representatives do not give any comments on the course of the investigation and probably will not comment on its results.

Almost three weeks have passed, but the situation has hardly moved from the dead center.

"It seems that I still have the last option - to sue Google," said Cooper. “For me, it will not be easy for obvious reasons, but I’m not going to just give up and lose ten years of work, not only of my own, but of other people, without trying to do everything possible.”

Dennis Cooper was born and raised in California and wrote poems and short stories at the beginning of his work. In 1976, he founded the literary magazine Little Caesar Magazine , and in 1978 - the literary publisher Little Caesar Press . He published his first book, Safe , in 1984. At the same time, he began work on the cycle of novels of George Miles Cycle , which brought him fame as a bold uncompromising writer, for whom there are no taboo topics. Some detractors consider his books pornographic.

In his blog on Blogspot, the writer published works, including the characteristic content of the genre 18+. He suggests that it was these artistic and literary works that could have caused the account to be blocked. At the same time, the writer has been published for more than ten years - and there have never been any problems. In addition, the blog was closed for underage users with a stub with a warning sign "Content is only for those over 18 years old." In addition, it can not be the reason for the removal of his email box.

Colleague writer David Ehrenstein (David Ehrenstein) expressed in comments on Facebook that the reason for the closure of the blog could have an article someone's complaint about the cycle of Cooper's novels in which he describes the work of prostitutes from the escort service. For the book The Sluts, the author has collected profiles of real workers in the sphere of intimate services from sites and forums of male prostitutes on the Internet (apparently, here they are ). In the book, the personality of some of the characters was probably recognizable.

Cooper's blog has been removed from the Google cache and is only partially preserved in the Time Machine archives at Archive.org and in several other services that are trying to preserve websites for history. For example, here is a copy of the site, made on January 3, 2012, with a review of the Israeli novel in the unusual erotic genre "Nazi BDSM". There, SS guard girls torture captured Allied soldiers.





The last attempt to index the site was made on March 20, 2016 . This copy already has a Google stub about deleting the blog. Several previous attempts to index the blog have been unsuccessful.

Someone may be shocked by such bold literature, but this is also part of the art. The mission of the writer is not to be afraid to touch on important and painful topics that are tabooed and silent in the mainstream of mass culture. For many young writers, Cooper's blog has become a place where you can share and discuss your innovative experiments that are difficult to break through the censorship of literary criticism.

PEN Center, an international non-governmental organization uniting professional writers, poets and journalists, spoke out in defense of Cooper yesterday. PEN received Cooper's permission to represent his interests, seeking a response from Google. Perhaps, with the help of such influential friends and a wide resonance in the media, the writer will still be able to recover his data - do what tens of thousands of ordinary users who Google has deleted accounts without explaining why cannot achieve.

For the writer himself and others, this will be another lesson that it is necessary to make several copies and store them on several hosts, in addition to the standard home archive.