Here's how it went down.

I sent this message:

Subject:
                    Regarding a deleted site
       Date:
                    Thu, 04 Feb 1999 16:48:54 -0500
        From:
                    palaskar <[email protected]>
            To:
                    [email protected], [email protected]
 
 
 

I don't know if this is the correct address to write to, but if it is
not, please forward this letter through the correct channels.

The following missive is not by any means intended as a 'flame.' I have
striven to elucidate my ideals with my full passion, however, and thus
the words, though polite, are uncompromising. I take full and sole
responsibility for what I say here. No one has given me these words, no
one has compelled me to write to you. I do this of my own free will, of
my own desire for justice, from my own conscience. Do not punish others
for my conscience. It is among the last things that I desire, that my
friends receive ill through this.

It has come to my attention that you have recently deleted the site 'The
Labyrinth,' a.k.a. 'Serendipity's btVs page', formerly
http://www.fortunecity.com/lavendar/sheppard/102 .This site, by posting
inapproapriate NC-17 material, violated your policy towards such NC-17
material, and you excercised your right, as citied in the
customer-provider agreement, to terminate the account without warning.

In doing so, you were well within your legal rights.

In doing so, you were wrong.

It is impossible for an ordinary, off-the-street person to comprehend
the power wielded by a sysop. It is a sacred charge, and an absolute
power. With a few motions of the hands, months of work can be erased.

This is what you did. No consideration or deliberation, merely expident
action. It would be logically, of course, far more difficult to consider
each case of violation rationally, given the likely size of
Fortunecities.

Difficulty does not matter. Expediency does not matter. The world of
computers is built on expediency, on speed, on arcane numbers and
protocols. The world of people is built on relationships, on
consideration, on love and amity.

By ignoring consideration, you ignore people. This is a wrong which is
multiplied by the power of the sysop. No person, or group of people,
should have power over another, or the possesions of another. The
temptation for abuse is simply too great. Power corrupts. Power
dehumanizes both the wielder and the wielded, because it sets us apart
from one another.

How much worse, then, is absolute power? Ask yourselves this.

You hold in your hands absolute power over the work of numberless
masses. Its existence or nonexistence is predicated solely by your
policy. Such power must not be abused. To wield it responsibly,
considerately, and humanely is a task which would require much delicacy,
thought, and deliberation.

I have seen no evidence of delicacy, thought, or deliberation. Merely a
fair, impartial, and utterly inhumane obeisiance to stated policy. You
did not, to my knowledge, give any warning to Serendipity, the
maintainer of the Labyrinth, or the frequenters of the Labyrinth; there
was no trial, no jury, and no judge; there were no appeals, no
arguments, and no case; there was nothing resembling what the ordinary
citizen of the democratic offline world would call justice.

I implore you not to let this be the precedent for the new online world
that we create. Such a world is by nature by, of, and for the people of
the world more so than any previous society or organization before it.
To order it without giving its citizens a fair and equal voice goes
against all the morals of freedom that modern society touts.

I have seen and experienced firsthand what power an adminstrator can
wield. I have had over two and a half years of work denied me, for the
simple reason that I violated policy. I nearly very literally killed
myself in despair and frustration over it.

I reiterate and restate: Great power comes with great responsibility. To
rule over others, as a king might, demands, requires, and predicates
nobility, compassion, and justice. And when the power is absolute, how
much greater is the humanity needed? Infinitely more.

Therefore, it is morally imperative that you change your policy. You
cannot reasonably, rationally, logically, or by any stretch of human
consideration expect to have the power to remove, nay, erase, whole
months of work with a few keystrokes and not abuse it. Such power
belongs in the most impartial, compassionate, and noble hands possible.
At the very least, it is something for a tribunal. At its ideal, it
belongs to the invididual soul and naught else.

As a current member of Fortunecity, I would not at all be surprised if
you deleted my site in retaliation for this missive. It would be well
within your rights. It would be covered by policy.

But it would still be wrong.

Palaskar, Lord of Ashes
[email protected]
 

Here's what happened later:

Subject:
                    Your FortuneCity account
       Date:
                    Fri, 12 Feb 1999 01:01:19 GMT
        From:
                    [email protected]
            To:
                    [email protected]
 
 
 

Dear palaskar,

http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/manor/73

USERNAME - palaskar
PASSWORD - ********

We would like to offer our apologies for the problems you may
have been experiencing trying to access the files that you had hosted on
FortuneCity.  On Sunday night there was a disk failure on a
storage device containing your homepage files, followed by a second
failure that occurred on the back-up disk.

At this point your data became inaccessible on both the original
storage disk and the back-up. A specialized data recovery team
then attempted unsuccessfully to retrieve the corrupted data.

The hardware manufacturers stated that the mean time between
failures is 1,000,000 hours (over 100 years), meaning the probability of
two disks failing within 3 hours of each other is almost impossible.
We have already enhanced our normal secure back-up procedures to
ensure the improbability of such an incident occurring again.

You are a valued citizen of FortuneCity and we therefore want to
help you rebuild your home. In lieu of the service disruption, we want
to offer a special set of benefits for your continued active
participation in our community. Please note these benefits are not available to
the community as a whole but only to the minority whose files have
been affected.

1) Any pages you create and have hosted on FortuneCity will NOT
have any banner placed on them for three months.

2) Any homepages you create will be automatically entered into
The Great FC New Homepage competition with hundreds of prizes
including software, games, CDs, books and T-shirts.  Only the small
minority of active FC citizens whose pages have been affected will qualify, so
you stand a great chance of winning.

The disk failure has not altered your status as a citizen of
FortuneCity - your USERNAME and PASSWORD will still work as
usual and you will still be able to upload files, access the Homebuilder,
File Manager, FTP, Discussion Boards and all the other utilities
available on our site.

If you have kept a back-up copy of your site you will be able to
re-upload your files using either the file manager

http://www2.fortunecity.com/acgi-bin/updatehome.pl

Or via Direct Browser FTP here:

ftp://palaskar:*******@ftp.fortunecity.com

To upload files simply drag them into the browser window and
they will upload automatically.

Those of you with large sites would be best off using FTP. You
will need an FTP program such as Cute-FTP, WS-FTP (Windows) or
Fetch, Anarchie (Mac).

Enter the following details in your FTP program:

HOSTNAME - ftp.fortunecity.com
USERNAME/ID - your FortuneCity USERNAME
PASSWORD - your FortuneCity PASSWORD

You will be dropped directly into your folder, where you can
upload, download, delete and rename your files.

Once again, we would like to thank you for your patience and
understanding apologize for any inconvenience caused. If you have
any comments or further questions please contact
[email protected].

Yours sincerely
 

Peter Macnee
CEO, FortuneCity

Now, I admit, I've cashed in quite a bit of karma by asking for Enlightenment via interesting messages on the Novelty list -- which, incidentally, keeps sending me wisdom, even though I think I have enough of it right now, Thank You Very Much, and don't want to suffer more to pay the karma to pay for the wisdom.

So, this could just be another example of how life seems to have a pre-set 'go