Luigi Mangione’s Account Renamed on Stack Overflow
Evan Carroll (via Hacker News):
On Stack Exchange, all of the contributions on the site are contributed under a license maintained by a third party called Creative Commons; Creative Commons provides a license which states that licensed content must be perpetually shareable for any purpose including modification and by anyone including for-profit ventures, so long as the work remains properly attributed. This incentivizes content creation because every contributor is working on a corpus of work which is free from royalties and modification restrictions: everyone is bettering and growing the commons by using the site.
[…]
Alas, this minimal obligation of attribution is too much for some companies which have sought to erode this right. Right now, on Stack Overflow, Luigi Magione’s account has been renamed. Despite having fruitfully contributed to the network he is stripped of his name and his account is now known as “user4616250“. As reported by one of the moderators, Zoe, on Stack Overflow.
Mangione has not actually been convicted of anything yet. Reddit, Facebook, and Instagram have deleted his accounts, but “the only one that chose to both erase him and keep the content, is Stack Exchange.” It’s not clear whether that’s legal.
The Ross Ulbricht case is even more egregious because he was convicted and his old pseudonym remains with his attribution as Ulbricht desired.
Previously:
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I mean he hasn’t been convicted but he shot a guy in the back in broad daylight and there is video footage. Whether a site wants to take down the posts prior to conviction is up to them IMO. I don’t know why they would erase his username and keep the posts though. His contributions on the site don’t look like they are so insightful that they are worth keeping.
How could it be legal?
a/ he's innocent until proven guilty.
b/ being guilty does not invalidate his copyright.
It probably isn’t legal but I can’t imagine there being any significant penalty. What are his damages? He’s got 4 answers and 6 questions. Nothing really significant in his posts tbh. Not sure what Evan is talking about when he says “ Despite having fruitfully contributed to the network”
If they don’t want his name on there they should just take all his posts down, as it’s a distraction. I think Luigi has got bigger problems to worry about though.
