Looking for the Rap Genius Moby Dick in an alternate universe

May 28, 2017 5:27 PM

So this spring I was looking for the annotated Moby Dick on the Rap Genius site. I remember that the annotations were somewhat anemic, and came across a discussion that indicated that the British rights holder for Moby Dick insisted it be removed. At that point someone had a dump of the original annotations, and there was a forum discussion indicating the whole thing had been moved elsewhere, but when I went to the site the imported annotations didn't really work and it was a big mess. So fast forward a few months, and it appears the annotated Moby Dick is back online: https://genius.com/Herman-melville-moby-dick-chap-1-loomings-annotated I can't find any trace of the original discussion nor can I find the downloadable annotations on my hard drive or elsewhere. It's starting to feel like that Berenstain Bears alternate universe thing. Can anyone locate a discussion of the removal of Moby Dick from Rap Genius or the downloadable annotations file? I thank you.
posted by craniac to Media & Arts (5 answers total)

Copyright has some weirrrrrd quirks, but Moby Dick was published in 1851 and Melville died in 1891. There can't possibly be such a thing as "the British rights holder for Moby Dick." The only thing I can think of is that perhaps the person annotated actual images of pages of a particular edition. Maybe there might be an argument for that.
posted by praemunire at 6:07 PM on May 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

The only thing I can think of is that perhaps the person annotated actual images of pages of a particular edition.

The annotation for "whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul" features a gif of Slash playing guitar from the GnR "November Rain" video, so perhaps it was a rights holder to something like that who demanded removal. I am aware that this is a ridiculous theory.
posted by thelonius at 3:20 AM on May 29, 2017

Response by poster: Yes, these are possibilities. What I also find weird is that I can't track down the original discussion.
posted by craniac at 5:36 AM on May 29, 2017

These may help your quest. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine has saved 284 billion web pages, some of which were on rapgenius.com: https://web.archive.org/web/*/rapgenius.com

The earliest version they have of genius.com: https://web.archive.org/web/20160416183038/https://genius.com/Herman-melville-moby-dick-chap-1-loomings-annotated

The site with the imported annotations is a big mess. If you're looking for something specific google:
(insert search terms here) site:(top level url of big mess)
Obviously, without the parentheses.

Using Windows? Some hard disk search tools work better than others. This is the best for file name related searches, IMHO: Everything at https://www.voidtools.com/

Good luck.
posted by Homer42 at 1:04 AM on May 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: This is embarrassing, but I just realized that the Genius text that was taken down was T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland, not Moby Dick.
posted by craniac at 8:10 PM on June 11, 2017