[Dylan16807]

Sometimes, not most of the time but sometimes, the wishes of an author are bad for the public. In a hypothetical scenario where an author wants to destroy all traces of their work, it's a bad thing to help them.

And this is about the data, and possible copyright violations, not the theft of property. Him returning the physical disk is perfectly fine. So throw out that argument.

It's really very straightforward. No gymnastics.

[yomly]

Brahms destroyed a whole bunch of his works out of his own insecurity that they were not good enough. Brahms is now long dead but his (that were not destroyed) works live on.