That wasn't tl;dr at all. It's the kind of exploration I hoped this thread could evince.
More experienced minds than mine have contemplated the ethics of cache-mining. (And I'd love to get pointed to them.)
In the abstract, I can respect someone's decision to pull it off the net. If it's not currently served, then taking it from the cache is "sneaky," and undermining their decision.
OTOH, I've stumbled on things I've forgotten I created on my very own hard-drive. It's easy to lose track of all the ideas and efforts that have burbled out of me along the years. So does benign neglect mean implicit permission?
And on the important third hand, I enjoy fanfic precisely because it serves my id-driven "must! have! fic!" needs. When I'm in that frame of mind, it's hard to discriminate between "sneaking around TPTB" and "sneaking around a fanfic author." (Not advocating, mind you, just reporting.)
Thanks for due consideration
More experienced minds than mine have contemplated the ethics of cache-mining. (And I'd love to get pointed to them.)
In the abstract, I can respect someone's decision to pull it off the net. If it's not currently served, then taking it from the cache is "sneaky," and undermining their decision.
OTOH, I've stumbled on things I've forgotten I created on my very own hard-drive. It's easy to lose track of all the ideas and efforts that have burbled out of me along the years. So does benign neglect mean implicit permission?
And on the important third hand, I enjoy fanfic precisely because it serves my id-driven "must! have! fic!" needs. When I'm in that frame of mind, it's hard to discriminate between "sneaking around TPTB" and "sneaking around a fanfic author." (Not advocating, mind you, just reporting.)