[Devilboy]

This is a public website and it's cached and retained by many servers all over the internet. Even if you deleted your comments at the source there's nothing preventing me from going to Google or The Internet Archive or whatever to find your old posts.

You decide what you make public, once it's public you can't close Pandora's box again. That's just the way things are now.

[Ardit20]

I just want to not be able to log in tomorrow.

So too I would perhaps also like this website to not contain my thoughts.If it takes a man to go through each of them, then fine. If it takes me going through each of them and deleting them then fine.

Not that I would, but it is in a way a matter of principle. I own all these comments. I should have the right to decide as to which site or which person can view them or otherwise. Not some complete stranger.

[Devilboy]

I disagree. You do not own those comments. The moment you made them public you shared ownership with everyone on the internet and beyond. If a newspaper wants to quote you they can do so without seeking your permission. If I want to copy it and post it on my blog I can do so, and if you ask me to remove it from my blog I can refuse.

[Ardit20]

I would need case authority for that proposition.

I would not for example see how my comment would be any different from any other article which you can not simply post in your blog as it is copyrightable. I do not either see for example how it would be different from say mentioning a great idea I told a friend I was going to implement yet goes on to implement it himself.

The boundaries are yet to be defined for certain, but I do not see how one can reason that others should be freely able to record my speech in a permanent form without making me know so.

If Hacker News in their terms and conditions stated that they owned all that I contributed and made this blatantly obvious, then fine, but otherwise, all that I have stated is mine, and within my authority alone.

Not that I care at all of any of it. I simply want my account to be deleted because I am tired of this place.

[Devilboy]

Nobody is recording your speech for you, YOU are recording it and putting it on the internet. YOU have the power to keep your thoughts off the internet if you want to. If you choose not to do so then that's fine too, you just can't change your mind about it later. That's how things work, if that's not OK for you then sorry but it's not going to change.

Equating a public comment on a public website to a copyrighted article by a professional writer is just naive. If you talked to a copyright lawyer in the USA I'm almost 100% sure that your comments would not clear the bar of what can be copyrighted. Even if it could there are many countries where it would not be protected by copyright and where anyone could reproduce your comments at will.