As you say, rights issues would probably stop something like this, and I have a few stories that show two sides of the rights issues.
1) Back in 1998, the company hosting my website received a cease and desist letter from a company that held the "Welcome Wagon(TM)" trademark because of a page I had on my website. That prompted me to get my own domain and move the content over (and I was able to get proper redirects installed on the company webserver). I was happy (I had my own domain, a ".org" and apparently, that was enough to keep the lawyers at bay). The hosting company was happy (they didn't have to deal with the cease and desist letter) and the trademark holding company was happy (they protected their trademark like they're legally required to). I'm sure that the trademark company would be upset if their trademark was still "in use" at [redacted].com (the hosting company, long gone by now).
2) I hosted a friend's blog on my server. A few months later he asked me to take the blog down, for both personal and possibly legal reasons (he was afraid of litigation from his employer, who had a known history of suing employees, but that's not my story to tell). I'm sure he would be upset (and potentially a lot poorer) had his content remained online for all to see.
3) I've received two requests to remove information on my blog. The first time (http://boston.conman.org/2001/08/22.2) someone didn't quite grasp the concept that domain name registration information is public, but I didn't feel like fighting someone who's grasp of English wasn't that great to begin with, and removed the information. The second time (http://boston.conman.org/2001/11/30.1) was due to a mistake, so I blacked out identifying information. I didn't want to remove the page, because, you know, cool URLs don't change (http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI.html); yet the incident was a mistake. There's no real point in seeing the non-redacted version, nor do I really want people to see the non-redacted version.
There are a ton of corner-cases like these to contend with. Just one reason why Ted Nelson's version of hypertext never got off the ground.
1) Back in 1998, the company hosting my website received a cease and desist letter from a company that held the "Welcome Wagon(TM)" trademark because of a page I had on my website. That prompted me to get my own domain and move the content over (and I was able to get proper redirects installed on the company webserver). I was happy (I had my own domain, a ".org" and apparently, that was enough to keep the lawyers at bay). The hosting company was happy (they didn't have to deal with the cease and desist letter) and the trademark holding company was happy (they protected their trademark like they're legally required to). I'm sure that the trademark company would be upset if their trademark was still "in use" at [redacted].com (the hosting company, long gone by now).
2) I hosted a friend's blog on my server. A few months later he asked me to take the blog down, for both personal and possibly legal reasons (he was afraid of litigation from his employer, who had a known history of suing employees, but that's not my story to tell). I'm sure he would be upset (and potentially a lot poorer) had his content remained online for all to see.
3) I've received two requests to remove information on my blog. The first time (http://boston.conman.org/2001/08/22.2) someone didn't quite grasp the concept that domain name registration information is public, but I didn't feel like fighting someone who's grasp of English wasn't that great to begin with, and removed the information. The second time (http://boston.conman.org/2001/11/30.1) was due to a mistake, so I blacked out identifying information. I didn't want to remove the page, because, you know, cool URLs don't change (http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI.html); yet the incident was a mistake. There's no real point in seeing the non-redacted version, nor do I really want people to see the non-redacted version.
There are a ton of corner-cases like these to contend with. Just one reason why Ted Nelson's version of hypertext never got off the ground.