Yay for archiving. Sorta. I'll let you know what I get back.

[azurelunatic]

http://www.furl.net will archive randomosity from off the 'net, both publicly and privately. It's actually a lot like a Certain Service That Shall Remain Nameless gone legit, actually, except crossed with a search engine so that when you archive fifty billion pages on dealing with chronic illness, all you have to do is type in "spoons" to the search, and you get the right one. And it looks like it's just the right tool for saving all those funky-ass links that you find on the friends-page but you don't have time to read at work, yet you don't want to make a big-ass bookmarks-to-read-at-home page without first screening them for "do they suck or not" or something.

I e-mailed the guru over there to see if they had any answers about the burning privacy question about whether or not it's permissible under their terms of service to publicly archive copyrighted material that was not publiclly available, especially without permission of the copyright holder. And I suggested that if there isn't such a clause, that they should put that one in there ASAP to avoid wankage. (Only I didn't say it quite like that. I think I said "immediately" instead of ASAP.)

I poked around on their search feature, and I found only one of my actual LJ posts on there, my observation last May on the role of the civilian in restraining the military's zeal, and having to make the decision that there are some prices for peace and security that are too high to pay, and that we have to tell the military this. That one was public, and it was very reasonable for someone to want to save that as an input to their brainspace that they'll want to remember where was. The site's legit, although they are affiliated with some sites with very shady spyware practices (the Lycos family, anyone? But then, Wired magazine's affiliated with them too, so there are some very good content things that have unfortunate bedfellows...) and it does not look to be a haven of trollage.

So. Another thing to check out, both to play with for good, because it does look nifty, and to monitor lest some asshat do an asshatted thing with it.

Comments

[bekijane.livejournal.com]

I think you would be able to archive friends only posts on it, but the only way to check legitimately is to privately archive a locked post of my own. I'm not sure I trust a strange sites security enough to do that; I'd rather not risk spiders with my sessionID cookies in them crawling everything they can get at.

I may have to clarify with them too. My disclaimer against my posts ending up on the-site-which-I'm-not-going-to-name-either-thankyou-very-much should cover me here too, but it's still a cause for concern.

More. Coffee. Please. Brain. Still ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz

[azurelunatic]

There's always the "test on project journal" dodge, with a freshly changed password, and password changed back after the test.

Which reminds me, I should put my last couple despicable puns into azurelettuce.

[bekijane.livejournal.com]

azurelettuce meet disorganised (whatever it was I said before)

Need coffee damn it. They shouldn't make a girl do the AM thing of a Sunday. 'taint natural.

[azurelunatic]

Tee-hee.

[azurelunatic]

I heard back from the guy, and the answer is yes and no -- when sharing with friends, a link to the page is provided, so in the case of a friends-only entry or a subscription-required article and your friend or Joe Public does not have a subscription, Joe Public and your friend both pull up disallowed.

For private consumption, a copy is saved, but that's hardly much of more concern than someone saving a copy on their own.

[bekijane.livejournal.com]

That eases the worry somewhat. Keeping a third party copy of words ©me whch may include chapters of the book is a little worrisome still though. Yes, as I have often pointed out, I am paranoid. This does not make me wrong all the time.

[azurelunatic]

Understandable. I commend your paranoia.