Thus far, these efforts have been in vain. Google has not responded beyond saying there was a violation of the Terms of Service agreement. It has neither identified the specific violation nor indicated why it also deleted Mr. Cooper’s email account. It has not provided Mr. Cooper with the ability to download his personal information so he might rebuild his blog and email account elsewhere. In one interview, Mr. Cooper said he thought that the male escort ads might have led to his account’s being deactivated, but this has not been confirmed by the company.

When I contacted Google for further comment, I got a response that said, “We are aware of this matter, but the specific Terms of Service violations are ones we cannot discuss further due to legal considerations.” I asked about why Mr. Cooper’s Gmail account was also deleted and whether or not he would be able to retrieve the archive of his work, and I was directed to Google’s Terms of Service, Gmail Policy and Blogger Content Policy, which did not offer any useful specifics.

Mr. Cooper’s is not the only blog that has been deleted over the years. There are reports here and there across the internet about blogs, mostly, being deleted for violations of Terms of Service. What is happening to Mr. Cooper, though, in terms of lack of an explanation, seems to be unprecedented, and he has, as of yet, the highest profile of those who have experienced this measure of data loss.

Google’s relative silence is deafening and disturbing. Mr. Cooper is reluctant to call this deletion censorship, but given the nature of his work that is what it feels like. Regardless, Google’s actions here suggest that some boundaries shouldn’t be challenged. That’s a shame. There is a wide range of art in the world, but there is an urgent need for art that pushes us and makes us uncomfortable because it forces us to think, to question, to give into it, to resist.

I am all for conversations about art and its limits, but I do not want a corporation to be the arbiter of those limits. Google, as a private entity, is allowed to dictate how people use its services. It is allowed to dictate the consequences when people use its services in ways it doesn’t approve. Such protocols are outlined in Terms of Service. “By using our services, you are agreeing to these terms,” they state. Access is acquiescence. We are invited to use “free” services, and in exchange, Google puts ads in front of us and mines our online habits for data.