Yahoo Deletes Journalist's Pre-Paid Legacy Site After Suicide 403
New submitter digitalFlack writes "Apparently Martin Manley has been a popular blogger and newspaper journalist for many years. For his own reasons, no indication of illness, he decided sixty years on this planet was enough. He designed a 40-page website with sections such as: 'Why Suicide?' and 'Why Age 60?.' Martin planned his suicide meticulously, but to manage his legacy, he picked Yahoo. He even pre-paid for five years. After he left this mortal coil on his 60th birthday, Yahoo decided they don't want his traffic, so they took the site down. Sorry, Martin."
They didn't know he also... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yahoo has contractual obligation to provide service, sudden death of a party is a sleazy way to weasel out of a service contract.
Re: They didn't know he also... (Score:5, Funny)
Pretty sure suicide is against the tos
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Since he's dead and can no longer defend his publication, it effectively becomes Yahoo's own publication, so it would be Yahoo condoning suicide. That someone should commit suicide for whatever reason is at best a controversial point of view. It might even be seen as inciting suicide and could be illegal. So yes, obviously what's on the page does have everything to do with it being taken down. If he wanted someone to be there to fight his fights, he could have stayed and done it himself, you know?
But on a m
Re: They didn't know he also... (Score:3)
It doesn't revert to yahoo. It would be his estates property. And his estates responsibility to fight for it. If he left any money to tie up loose ends with?
Heck, if there's a mirror I'd host it. The question is who knows his dns settings?
Re: They didn't know he also... (Score:4, Insightful)
It definitely belongs to his estate. No "maybe" about it.
Re: They didn't know he also... (Score:4, Insightful)
The content does, but the publishing contract ends. A dead person can not be part in a contract. Continued publication would be Yahoo's responsibility, and they would be nuts to keep publishing something this controversial.
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So life insurance doesn't need to pay up, because their contract is with the deceased, not the beneficiaries?
Re: They didn't know he also... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? Because it is controversial? Some one needs to talk about it. This is the core problem now. Everyone is afraid to offend someone.
Political Correctness can be so fucking offensive.
Re: They didn't know he also... (Score:5, Informative)
you're 100% wrong. debts, like assets, first sit with the estate of the deceased. all assets are used to pay off debts, and then, what is left over is inheritance. an Estate can go into bankruptcy, the only way kids get hit with a "horrible mortgage that bankrupts them" is they were too foolish to put the estate into bankruptcy and give up the house, or too foolish to , you know, read the documents that said "hey, there is a mortgage against this home, taking the house involves taking over the mortgage".
Re: They didn't know he also... (Score:5, Informative)
Some facts that people who fault Yahoo for taking the site down overlook:
Also, "-1, Troll" is not an acceptable expression of disagreement.
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The Yahoo terms of service clearly state that their hosting contracts are non-transferable and end upon death.
Is that TOS line something that will hold up in court in a violation-of-contract lawsuit? You can't sign away your rights.
Anyone can put up a sign, laws or not. Anyone can put something unenforceable in a contract. Neither means it will stick.
The salient question lies in the details of the contract that he agreed to when he paid Yahoo money. What was provided in return for his remunerance? Hosting? Storage space? A unique address? Non-transferrability probably does not (I'm reaching now) appl
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The only person who has real standing is dead, so it doesn't have to hold up.
And if you enter a contract that terminates when you do, suicide is probably not the best follow-up act. Lesson learned, check the small print.
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Points 2 and 3 look solid, but I take issue with this one:
The journalist disclaimed all rights to the site's content and released it into the public domain. Thus there is no content to inherit. His estate has exactly as much claim to the content as anybody else: None. Yahoo can not violate anybody's right to the content, as there is no such right.
Rights to the content aren't the issue here. His contract with Yahoo was that they display the content. That content could be anything he owns, anything in the p
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The journalist disclaimed all rights to the site's content and released it into the public domain. Thus there is no content to inherit.
Not quite correct. There is no mechanism in copyright law to transfer anything to the public domain except by expiration of copyright (even then it's a little fuzzy whether copyright law really recognizes a "public domain" except in the constitution). Saying that you release something to the public domain creates an implied license for everyone in the world to copy and modify their copies of the content as they see fit. The estate still inherits the copyright itself, there's just not much they can do with i
Re: They didn't know he also... (Score:5, Informative)
Linked from the first paragraph of the index page is the following text (copied from a mirror of the site): "I, Martin Manley, being the creator and owner of all information on the site "MartinManleyLifeAndDeath.com", neither hold nor retain any claim or copyright on any part of this web-site. I do not grant these rights to any individual person or entity either in life or upon death. Rather I release all rights to this work -ï making it public domain. Anyone can do with it whatever they wish. Martin Allen Manley August 15, 2013"
From the general Yahoo terms of service: "You agree that your Yahoo! account is non-transferable and any rights to your Yahoo! ID or contents within your account terminate upon your death."
From the Yahoo web hosting terms of service [yahoo.com]: "You agree that you will not: [...] promote physical harm or injury against any group or individual".
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I would speculate it's not a question of how he committed suicide. Had he had a Star Wars fan site or something, it would have been left up. But that's not what it was: it was a site that, in part, explained why he committed suicide. And it may be at least somewhat reasonable for Yahoo to interpret that as promoting suicide, and quite reasonable for it to take down the site for that reason.
Re: They didn't know he also... (Score:5, Insightful)
From what I read of it, he was talking about his personal feelings and opinions.
I could see if it were a site that he put video of his own suicide on, or other graphic depictions, there would be a reason to remove it. In this case, there was none. It was left as his legacy, or at least for the 5 years he paid for.
There was no good justification in taking it down, except possibly that it took too much traffic. If it were a small hosting company, and had a negative impact on services to other customers, I could see it. Yahoo has enough resources to continue supporting that site for the full term as paid for.
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His site was explaining why he committed suicide. Basically by definition, that's him explaining why he felt that suicide was the best option in his case -- which is implicitly explaining why he thinks that suicide is the best option ever, which if you look at it the right way, is promoting suicide. It's not promoting suicide in the sense of "Hey Fred... you really oughta go kill yourself" or in the sense of "you should consider
Re: They didn't know he also... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Indeed, now we just have to find an alternative means of powering them, so they don't eat all our pills.
Re: They didn't know he also... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure anybody who knew him would like to read it. That may very well include people who didn't know him all that well, so a website would be an obvious way to reach all potentially interested parties. A major part of the reason for creating the site may be to comfort those left behind. With that in mind I cannot see how anybody could think it was an acceptable move from Yahoo.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: They didn't know he also... (Score:4, Insightful)
I sincerely believe that for every problem you try to solve through censorship, there exists a better solution. And I think freedom of speech is too important to take such a site down. But Martin Manley's right to publish this is much less important than everybody else's right to read it. There are other deceased people who have written much more harmful texts than this, which are not being censored. If you disagree with something, you present a different point of view rather than applying censorship.
I will not say this suicide was the right thing to do. But I think committing suicide leaving your friends wondering why is much worse than letting them know your reasoning behind. It would be even better if we could get those people to talk with somebody beforehand such that the decision to commit suicide is not something they are making all on their own. There may be alternatives. But we may need some changes to society to make that happen.
The concern about getting so ill or getting so old and worn out that you have only suffering left in your life is a valid concern. If any animal was in such a state you'd put it down because that is considered the most humane thing to do. Why do people have to be treated less humane than that? Martin Manley decided to put an end to his own life before it came to that. If he had believed he could be assisted to end his life once there really was nothing left to live for, he might not have been so proactive about it. In other words in a society a bit more positive towards suicide, Martin Manley might still have been alive today.
There are also stories about terminally ill people who travel to a different country just so they can legally be assisted in suicide instead of facing a slow and painful death. Some of those decide to take this final trip to die sooner than they would otherwise have done because they would otherwise be too weak to take the trip. Many would much rather have stayed home and lived for a few months longer among friends and family and then end life quietly when their health was getting too bad.
Finally being assisted in a suicide after having talked it over with your closest relatives plus a doctor and a psychiatrist would be the most humane way to end life for some people. When those people commit suicide on their own, it is a failure of society to treat them humanely.
It is even worse when a young and mostly healthy person end their own life. I don't know if I could ever be convinced that could ever be the right way to go. A friend of mine did that at the age of 31. I didn't see that coming. I don't know if I will ever stop wondering if there was anything we could have done differently.
Re: They didn't know he also... (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't a freedom of speech issue. Freedom of speech is there so that people can contribute to public discourse without having to worry about being sent to prison or killed.
If you're going to kill yourself before anybody has a chance to issue a rebuttal, there's no point in free speech at all. You could do that just fine in East Germany during the height of the Stazi.
Bottom line though is that freedom of speech isn't particularly useful if it's just a collection of sound bites where nobody is responding and or defending their position. Sure, it's better than having no freedom of speech, but it's not particularly useful.
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Freedom of speech does not obligate a private party to be your voice platform.
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Freedom of speech does not obligate a private party to be your voice platform.
Perhaps not, but a five year pre-paid contract does.
Re: They didn't know he also... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually you can read what he wrote, just on a mirror of his site. Inadvertently yahoo have invoked the Streisand effect.
It is interesting what he has written and also what he hasn't. One thing was a failing memory that was one thing he didn't like the idea of having to be taken care of in future years another issue was the costs associated with getting old his medical insurance was due to expire sometime next year and he didn't see that as being affordable. Wanting to leave a legacy and not to be a burden on the state.
There are other reasons that he wrote about which you can choose to read about if you wish.
What he didn't write about was love, ok he was interested in the future of his step children but there was no love in his life, nobody who was special in his eyes nobody who he woke up with each morning no one who he treasured being in his life. That to me seems key. I'm not young and with my health i can't expect to live to any great age. Do i want to die earlier than i have too? the answer is without doubt no.
4 years ago I had a heart attack and in the ambulance, although i didn't know it was a heart attack i knew it was serious and I also knew I felt i was too young for this! Three months later I had to return to the hospital, but this time i drove myself and with periods of crushing chest pains i got there and parked my car and walked the 400 or 500 yards to the A&E department - maybe the hardest walk of my life. To finally present myself at the desk and say i think i'm having a heart attack in actuality it was a 97% blocked coronary artery. Was a tough 24 hours but after a stent fitted i was ok again.
Recovery in the months that followed was difficult, the 50% rate after a first heart attack is about 6 to 8 years and thats after 30% who died of that first heart attack. Becoming mortal, and realising there was a fair chance that I might not last that much longer was quite depressing, some outstanding long term goals have had to be put aside as I don't see them as viable any more.
On the positive side since then I've met the most wonderful woman around my age (for a change) and loving her makes all the difference. We are living too far apart right now but that we can work on. She is in my thoughts everyday and well I hope we get to grow old together. You see being rich or poor is not that important but being with someone you love is. Without love your life can be without reason.
Thing is you don't know when fate will bring you together but it can happen any day if you leave an opportunity for it too occur. Any way love is why I want to keep on living, trying to do the best I can for the people I care about and why I won't bow out by suicide. Family, friends, and an understanding lover what else matters.
Re: They didn't know he also... (Score:4, Insightful)
Three months later I had to return to the hospital, but this time i drove myself and with periods of crushing chest pains i got there and parked my car and walked the 400 or 500 yards to the A&E department - maybe the hardest walk of my life.
I was going to say no offense in prefix to this, but rethought it... offense intended....
Driving to the hospital when you think you're having a heart attack is one of the most monumentally stupid ideas I have ever heard of in my entire life, and that includes 6 years in the army and several more years working for the government as a civilian. If it's a medical emergency, call an ambulance. That is what they are there for.
And don't try to tell me it was rural so therefore no ambulance service: you yourself said that you had to walk a quarter mile to the front door of the hospital after parking, which suggests a large and mostly full parking lot. This suggests that you were in an urban area.
Re: They didn't know he also... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: They didn't know he also... (Score:2)
Which includes hosting a site about why someone killed themselves
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Assisted suicide is legal in three US states.
Re:They didn't know he also... (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember: it's Ya-"let's delete early Internet history because keeping 1TB around is too expensive"-hoo we're talking about.
Never trust Yahoo. Ever.
Re:They didn't know he also... (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember: it's Ya-"let's delete early Internet history because keeping 1TB around is too expensive"-hoo we're talking about. Never trust Yahoo. Ever.
You're talking about Geocities? Well, actually it was *several* terabytes, so it would have cost them two or three *hundred* dollars to store all that. Quite a lot for a small company like Yahoo. *cough*
In all seriousness, I agree with you- I guessed at the time of the shutdown that the storage requirements would be in the ballpark of the low-terabytes (slight underestimate, but not by much), and- more importantly- that the cost of the traffic would (by modern standards) be negligible. Indeed, the profit or loss- either way- at that time would have been small by Yahoo's standards, but I figured out that they should still be able to easily turn a profit it by making it archive-only. *If* they'd been that bothered about it, that is.
The conclusion I came to was that the reasons for shutting down Geocities "probably had more to do with either indirect legal issues (tax write-offs, accounting and the like) or some executive who wanted to be seen doing something that looked more significant than it actually was." [slashdot.org] Things I read later pretty much confirmed I was right on this.
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Oh, goodness no, if they deleted the Geocities data then they did a laudable favor to future generations. I had a Geocities site, it was stupid, and if it's totally gone then I'm glad.
Re:They didn't know he also... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yahoo has contractual obligation to provide service
Do they? Have you read the contract? It is possible that the contract has a termination clause in the event of death. It is also quite likely that advocating or promoting suicide is a violation of the terms of service. Contracts have fine print for a reason.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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It is also quite likely that advocating or promoting suicide is a violation of the terms of service.
To be honest, I don't see anything advocating or promoting suicide. I see him explaining his reasonings in rather clear terms and as such I'd classify it as a discussion about suicide. There is a difference between discussion and active advocation and/or promotion.
There's a page on the site that outlines a list of possible methods and reasons why you would choose one or the other of them. Sure, it's in the context of how he decided what method to use for himself, but it can be read as instructional for other people, which is a clear violation of Yahoo's ToS.
Re:They didn't know he also... (Score:4, Insightful)
Do they? Have you read the contract? It is possible that the contract has a termination clause in the event of death. It is also quite likely that advocating or promoting suicide is a violation of the terms of service. Contracts have fine print for a reason.
Don't they? Have YOU read the contract? Is it fair to assume that documenting one's own reasons for suicide constitutes promoting it?
Indeed, contracts do have fine print for a reason. That reason is for high and mighty business thugs such as yourself to be able to dick over little guys without making them aware of it beforehand. It's pretty simple - Yahoo was caught trying to (quietly) weasel out of their responsibilities to avoid backlash for hosting speech that they realized would be unpopular with some people. A spineless move.
Re:They didn't know he also... (Score:5, Informative)
Yahoo has contractual obligation to provide service, sudden death of a party is a sleazy way to weasel out of a service contract.
Unless he violates the terms of service.
A section of his site was instructions on how to commit suicide, which is an illegal act in many (most?) jurisdictions.
Why illegal? (Score:2)
Why would suicide be illegal? Where I live it isn't. How could be someone prohibited from suicide save livelong incarceration in a padded cell?
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I've long heard suicide described as the only action which is illegal to attempt, but not to succeed at. The reason attempted suicide is illegal is because society judges that only a mentally ill person would do it, so we use criminal law as a wedge to force a person to get help. Obviously this is at odds with euthanasia so society has been discussing that for a generation or more.
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More importantly: If you committed suicide, you're dead (otherwise it would be attempted suicide). How are they going to punish you after your death?
Apparently, they cancel your webhosting service.
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Let's hope Wikipedia is accurate, but it says about the US: "By the early 1990s only two states still listed suicide as a crime, and these have since removed that classification." So that would be a no. And neither did the site promote physical harm or injury against any group or individual, or any act of cruelty to animals, at least, not on the pages I have seen.
Yahoo has sunk really low.
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Yahoo Terms of Service (Score:3)
"No Right of Survivorship and Non-Transferability. You agree that your Yahoo! account is non-transferable and any rights to your Yahoo! ID or contents within your account terminate upon your death. Upon receipt of a copy of a death certificate, your account may be terminated and all contents therein permanently deleted."
Open and shut, IMHO. Yahoo is just following its terms.
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Yahoo didn't know he also prepaid lawyers. Or at least lets hope so. Yahoo has contractual obligation to provide service, sudden death of a party is a sleazy way to weasel out of a service contract.
Typical corporate America, take the money, agree to the terms of the contract, then fuck them.
don't see where it matters (Score:2, Interesting)
He *thought* he had a website up for five years when he died. He'll never know the difference.
But because geeks always want to fix things ... it seems to me that if he had the website in someone else's name, or even in a lawyer's name, it'd still be up.
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What a strange response, regardless of the reasoning behind Yahoo canceling the service (looks like they're pushing the ToS button). I see this as tantamount to somebody buying a burial plot and funeral services, and being dumped in the wilderness with the justification, "they'll never know, since they're dead!"
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What a strange response, regardless of the reasoning behind Yahoo canceling the service (looks like they're pushing the ToS button). I see this as tantamount to somebody buying a burial plot and funeral services, and being dumped in the wilderness with the justification, "they'll never know, since they're dead!"
And you think that doesn't happen [wikipedia.org]?
I'm not trying to justify what yahoo did -- it was scummy, and I hope they get prosecuted, if there's anyone who would do so. Just pointing out that for him, the important thing is believing up to the moment of death that the arrangements he had made would continue afterwards. Such arrangements are, usually, in a practical manner, for the benefit of people still alive.
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I'm not trying to justify what yahoo did -- it was scummy, and I hope they get prosecuted
What for?
"...any rights to your Yahoo! ID or contents within your account terminate upon your death."
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Fuck Yahoo! (Score:5, Informative)
In the meantime, there is a mirror located here [zeroshare.info].
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Streisand effect in play. (Or maybe Obi-Wan effect perhaps)
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Why isn't this tagged with the censorship logo? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only was this website paid for, it was obviously part of the deceased's last wishes. If Yahoo has no respect for the law or its customers, it should at least show some respect to a dude's last wish.
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If the website was in the deceased's name, the contract ended upon that person's death. You are under no obligation to honor a contract to a dead person.
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If the website was in the deceased's name, the contract ended upon that person's death. You are under no obligation to honor a contract to a dead person.
They may not have an obligation, legally speaking; but they have the guy's money (so, unless their pricing minions suck, they should be able to make at least a slight profit on the contract) and they sure look like dicks by immediately going against the customer's expressed wishes.
It is not illegal to exploit absolutely every angle not forbidden by law or contract; but nobody has to like you for it, nor should they.
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Apparently Melissa Meyer is a big fan of Ayn Rand.
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Argh. MARISSA.
Re:Why isn't this tagged with the censorship logo? (Score:5, Insightful)
That is a blatant lie ie a lawyer appointed by a person to carry out their last will and testament is bound by contractual law to honour that contract. Same for leaving estate to pets et al. Face it Yahoo are a bunch of douche bag shits heads for what they have done and the stink of an ex-google bimbo is all over it.
As for some of the reasons the dude committed suicide, reincarnation might obviate the exercise and even worse place him in even worse circumstance ;D.
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Need to right the release of rights page, read his last line.
Release of Rights
I, Martin Manley, being the creator and owner of all information on the site "MartinManleyLifeAndDeath.com", neither hold nor retain any claim or copyright on any part of this web-site. I do not grant these rights to any individual person or entity either in life or upon death. Rather I release all rights to this work - making it public domain. Anyone can do with it whatever they wish.
Martin Allen Manley
August 15, 2013.
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See this is why you retain copyright but give a permissive license like creative commons, etc.
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Actually, Yahoo might be breaking the law by hosting the site. Free speech law goes pretty far in the US, but encouraging suicide, or any other major illegal activity could get them in trouble. I also assume there's something in their TOS that forbids such content, so they're all good.
And someone's "last wish" isn't legally binding for good reason... Just because you're dying doesn't mean your
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Because it's not censorship.
And the idea that a corporation with shareholders should in some way show compassion, you're cute.
Yahoo should have considered the negative publicity, proving that pre-paid means nothing after death. More likely they have legal advice that keeping a site which will be cited as a suicide advocate is more expensive in the long term than lost revenue.
It doesn't matter that the site is a personal opinion and as neutral as it can be whil
I permamarked it (Score:2)
I permamarked it best I could.
http://www.permamarks.net/grabbed_urls/OQhBYg/webcache.googleusercontent.com_357.htmlz [permamarks.net]
so? (Score:2)
Yahoo Doing Evil Again (Score:2, Interesting)
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Dead people don't have rights, so the poster who asked about Manley's lawyers is right on the money, hopefully he set up a legal trust to deal with these issues. If Manley had set this up with Japanese hoster they probably wouldn't have thought twice about hosting the site. --
Yahoo has a policy that they close your account if they die.
I think setting up a legal trust would involve a level of research and planning not suggested by his choice to simply use Yahoo hosting. Furthermore --- suing Yahoo would
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Yahoo has a policy that they close your account if they die.
I assume all bets are off if Yahoo dies. But getting back to the point;
I think setting up a legal trust would involve a level of research and planning not suggested by his choice to simply use Yahoo hosting.
Uh, if I understand your terrible use of English... legal trusts, living wills, etc, are fairly common place and any lawyer who specializes in such, and there are many, would have it set up in a jiffy. You're not really sure what you're talking about, are you?
TL;DR (Score:2)
There is a novel sized amount of text here.
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Novella-sized, perhaps. If you want a Tolstoy-esque novel by someone who committed suicide, check out Mitchell Heisman's suicidenote.info [suicidenote.info].
Bonus: check out the chapter titles.
uh oh (Score:5, Funny)
Understanding what death means (Score:2)
Among many other things, death entails a complete lack of power.
Winning strategy (Score:5, Funny)
2. Kill customer, make is look like a suicide.
3.?
4. Profit!
Read a little of it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Read a little of it (Score:5, Interesting)
Why isn't he entitled to decide when he has lived enough? Why does he need valid medical reasons?
I think you're right, it's a failing of society. Society rather plays for god and decide who lives and who dies.
(I only hope he performed a clean suicide rather than jumping in front of a train, or something)
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That makes me feel bad for the dude. You mean he didn't actually have any reason to off himself? You could have told him that, I'm sure he would have listened to reason in his highly emotional state of mind.
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A guy kills himself based on his own imagination and you think that's a failure of society? I think there are more than enough services available for anything he could dream up.
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It's his own damned choice to take his life. Not our business to judge.
Yahoo definitely wrong choice. Or was it? (Score:5, Informative)
"No Right of Survivorship and Non-Transferability. You agree that your Yahoo! account is non-transferable and any rights to your Yahoo! ID or contents within your account terminate upon your death. Upon receipt of a copy of a death certificate, your account may be terminated and all contents therein permanently deleted."
Allegedly, this was in effect for a while.. the page
http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/utos/utos-173.html [yahoo.com]
says it was last updated March 16, 2012.
For a man who made a living with his words, maybe he should have read the TOS ( short by some comparison). Or, maybe like the false 'treasure hunt', he knew Yahoo would cancel his account, and through both methods he gains some post-mortem notoriety. Either way.. I hope he gets some pleasure out of all this attention to his life being generated today.
Seems (Score:2)
Now they have another PR issue and are exposes as jerks.
Marissa Mayer response expected soon (Score:2)
He was heard to say: (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Mirror? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.zeroshare.info/ [zeroshare.info]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.zeroshare.info/ [zeroshare.info]
http://web.archive.org/web/20130815235729/http://martinmanleylifeanddeath.com [archive.org] as well, which is guaranteed to reflect the original.
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Use http://web.archive.org/web/20130816143409/http://www.martinmanleylifeanddeath.com/why_not [archive.org] even before it was down there were some bad links when omitting the hostname.
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If he has an heir who wants to go the effort of trying to get a refund from yahoo, I'm sure yahoo will refund it as soon as the lawyers send the appropriate letter. It won't get it back online, though. They could use the money to put the site up somewhere else, if they wanted.
So my guess (gambling is for fools, that's why I only make guesses) is that yahoo would not ever be sued. To be sued they would have to first be asked for the refund, and then refuse; and then refuse again when threatened with legal ac
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Whether David sues Goliath is pretty much irrelevant. It's whether Yahoo! suffers a (IMHO well deserved) PR disaster that counts. It's news like these that people keep in mind when they think of companies. Next time I think about using Yahoo, I'll remember: "Oh, that was that bunch of jerks that kicked a dead customer out who pre-paid for 5 years? Okay, better look elsewhere."
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Anybody who hasn't heard about any of the other sucky things yahoo has done over the years probably won't hear about this one either. Or if they do, remember it. If he'd been from slashdot he would have used prgmr.com or something
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You would lose the bet.
Yahoo would have taken the site down if he was dead or not. It doesn't matter how much he has paid in advance. It violates the terms of service.
It's not like they get a notice every time a customer dies. Somebody would have complained to Yahoo they are hosting a site both advocating suicide and describing many methods of doing so. Not very legal in California.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm going to use a tank of Nitrogen and put on some good music.
I'll end up feeling happy and die in a matter of minutes.
(Not now, when I'm older, and don't have pets and don't want to go to a home)
Re:good for him! (Score:5, Informative)
This little quote from the guy's site:
The thought of being in a nursing home, physically or mentally disabled, was the single scariest thing I had ever thought about
This is exactly what I've been thinking for years now...
I worked as a nurses' aide in a nursing home one college during summer. (Nurses' Aide = butt-wiper.) It was a depressing, terrifying job. Most "residents" had bed-pads because they couldn't get up to go poo. We had:
* A woman who had long lost her mind, was cemented in a fetal position, and regularly coded. Staff had to restart her heart each time, because she had no living relatives or living will.
* A woman who had long lost control of her body, but not her mind, and was just never visited by any of her children.
* The many who would be tied down to their bed, to prevent them from getting up and wandering around.
* The profoundly retarded girl (36 yo) that staff would purposely put into (rigid) seizure, in order to make it easier to change her bedding.
* The Alzheimer's woman who thought I was her son. When she'd be combative to other staff, they'd have me ask her, "please mom, just eat this pudding," which had sleep meds mixed in.
* Bedsores.
* And Golda, senile and assumed incapable of coherent speech. Staff were just to lazy to listen between the word salad and half-words. She eventually spoke a full sentence to me ("I need to go to the bathroom"), the only one in five years, I was told. I took her in, stepped away, and she had her first taste of freedom in years.
Needless to say, I will not allow myself to fall into such a situation in infirmity. Adult children of old people –– Your parent knows that living alone at home, doing what s/he wishes to do, may suffer a fatal fall or similar in their home. They are probably at peace with this. Don't let your own fear of personal, potential guilt lead you to essentially put your aging parent in a white-walled jail for their remaining years. Would you want to spend your last 10 years of life in a bed, with only a TV to keep you company?
Re:good for him! (Score:4, Insightful)
Suicide and euthenasia are ancient taboos, with a strong religious influence propping that view up in the supposedly modern day. A truly enlightened populace would be able to maturely address, and deal with, such issues as simple life choices.
"Checking out today sir?"
"Yes, thanks; I've enjoyed my stay".
Re: (Score:3)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:good for him! (Score:5, Insightful)
Putting a bullet to your head in front of witnesses and the police means there's little to no investigation - or, cost to society. They clean up the street, but it's obvious why, how, and when you died.
Disappearing into the woods could prompt a million-dollar manhunt trying to 'rescue' you, until or unless they find you first. And once they do find you, they'll have to do an autopsy to investigate cause of death - possibly quite an expensive one, as your remains will have degraded. You'll cause a lot of extra cost and grief to society that you could have avoided.
Maybe that was important to him.
Re: (Score:3)
I know somebody who died in the woods on a hike.
It was a while ago, probably in the 1960s. His name was Eric, he was probably in his 50s or 60s, and he was a doctor (a radiologist). He used to lead day hikes in the New York City area for the American Youth Hostels, and his hikes were very popular.
One day, he was hiking with his wife (I think in Bear Mountain park). He was coming down a mountain, and told his wife, "You go down that way, and I'll go down this way." His wife got to the bottom and he didn't sh
Re:good for him! (Score:5, Insightful)
I intend to be living a fantastic life and raising hell for another decade or three yet. Deal with it.
So... your magic number isn't 60, but possibly 85 or 90. Ok, that's fine. I am more than happy to let you define how long you think your quality of life is good. So what happens after that?
I've one great-great-uncle who lived to be 106. (They found him one evening leaned up against a fencepost, where he'd evidently stopped to take a little break whilst making his daily walk around his farm. Nothing wrong with him, the doctor said, except that he finally just wore out.)
Yeah, and I've got an 80+ year old great uncle in-law or something who's been bedridden for years now. Adult-onset type 2 diabetes. The diabetes so far has caused blindness, and has led to the amputation of both legs. It could happen to anyone, even you. 51 is a long way from 70.
My own grandfather developed Alzheimer's, and although he remained perfectly healthy in body until the end, that was probably the most horrifying and heart wrenching thing to undergo. He was terrified at least for as long as knew what was happening, and it wasn't much better for those around him.
We all wish to age gracefully, die in our sleep peacefully, and while I agree arbitrarily committing suicide on your 60th birthday is nuts... committing suicide when the circumstances of your final days are rapidly becoming apparent is pretty rational in my books.
Re: (Score:3)
By the time you know you've got Alzheimers, it's too late to consider suicide.
No. [wikipedia.org] Highly recommended to get perspective on things.