> am i missing something? i don't see anything about research or studies in the original email.

That is, in fact, the entire problem. The researchers doing the study lied about who they were and where they were from (in another case, they claimed to be from France; in this case, from Germany) and did not tell anyone it was a study until after some subjects contacted lawyers.

Also the CCPA isn't supposed to apply to hobby/no-revenue sites, but one of the things that qualifies you for CCPA is having PII from 50k Cali residents, so if you log IPs in just the 'right' way and Hackernews finds your site you may end up qualifying overnight.