Comment by acangiano | Hacker News Reader

Comment by acangiano | Hacker News Reader

Interesting removal terms. They pretty much force you to admit that you downloaded, whatever they say you downloaded in order to have your data removed. Immediately after having confirmed your real identity via Facebook, of course. They could sell this information to MPAA and RIAA for gold.

The Details:

By submitting a request to have your download activity removed from our database, you are acknowledging that the activity was, in fact, carried out by yourself. This means that you are only submitting a request to have the details of your own personal activity deleted. Any unrecognized activity, such as files you did not download or do not remember downloading, are not — I repeat, are not to be included in your removal request. Why is this imperative? Well, we actually don’t have to explain ourselves...sorry.

The important part is that you understand these terms and conditions before hitting that beautiful button that will erase your criminal back ground, at least for now. Wait, you did remember to read these terms before making the decision to submit a removal request, right? Of course you did, everyone reads the fine print.

Other Important Things to Consider: We make no guarantees that your information will not appear on any other databases. We may have erased your bad behavior but, keep in mind that your data on this site is aggregated public domain. So, if by chance, another sadistic group of people decides to open a similar web site, we have no control over what they do with your information. Furthermore, if you continue to involve yourself in activity like this, your future download history will, without a doubt, appear in our database again and we may not be as nice about it next time.

If any part of these terms is still unclear, please visit your local elementary school and ask to repeat grades 3 through 5.

Indeed. That's pretty shady. In my mind it transforms this site from "amusing exercise in internet privacy resarch" to "borderline extortion". It's also not a contract or affidavit, though. There's legally nothing to prevent you from lying to them AFAICT.

To top that off, the company running the site is American, not Russian: XMLSHOP LLC.

A better idea is to just cycle the MAC address on your router and get new IPs

That just spreads out the data. It does nothing to erase the association of the IP that pulled the torrent with your account, which can still be subpoenaed by a copyright holder. There are much better privacy solutions.

Just another layer to their trolling. I doubt they would get much money from MPAA/RIAA since I'd be surprised if those groups didn't have similar and more encompassing databases already. The point about making you acknowledge you downloaded the data is simply a framing of "Just because we have this IP that matches these files doesn't mean you actually downloaded them even if you currently share that IP; but we're only going to comply to take-down requests of your personal data, so if you think an arbitrary IP represents your own personal data, that's your mistake."

> 'd be surprised if those groups didn't have similar and more encompassing databases already.

Those groups don't have Facebook verified identities of people admitting of downloading specific files. Pretty hard to prove that "it wasn't me" at that point.

It might be a joke. It might be a serious attempt to screw you, disguised as a joke. It's like some movie character who tells you not to do something, then pushes you to do it anyway, either to teach you a lesson or because they are actually out to get you. I think it's just a joke, though.

> They could sell this information to MPAA and RIAA for gold.

Maybe in the US, but in many other countries they would be breaking several privacy laws. In fact, even the collecting the initial minimal information (IP's + downloads) already breaks privacy laws in most of Europe. Commercially, this information has no value.

They are an American company.

Thought the site said Russian.

The lack of seriousness on the site greatly compromises the value of the data. As a captcha they they ask you enter the entire text of the USA Constitution, and give a mailing address in Antarctica. There is no evidence that large portions of the data isn't made up, no sane company would want to touch this. The agreement above sound more like an attempt to prevent people from contacting them in the first place (probably as they have to remove data manually), than a prelude to extortion.

> The lack of seriousness on the site greatly compromises the value of the data.

I think that's the point. They want to make a point about privacy, but they don't want anyone to take the specific data seriously.

countries can definitely be forced or rather be asked to cooperate to reduce piracy - http://croak.eu/uDKQwa

The (new-style) minutemen of the internet, these. Though this web site may have positive effects, all signs point towards RIAA / MPAA sellout.

keep in mind that your data on this site is aggregated public domain

WTF is "aggregated public domain" supposed to mean? It's certainly not any copyright feature I've ever heard of, and I've done some reading.

Besides that, nobody asked them to "guarantee" that the info wouldn't show up anywhere else, just f-ing delete it from their database. Oh, but maybe not being able to control screen scrapers means that they don't know how to "DELETE FROM `user_activity` WHERE user_id = $foo;"

See? No preventing of screen scrapers necessary.

I think they mean that they can't stop someone who may have already scraped that info before you requested the delete.

Were they ever asked to do so?

Some people might, and this is making it clear that they can't fulfill that request.

What do you mean? I'm quoting their statement, and regardless it's irrelevant towards their ability to delete user data that they actually possess.

Terrifying stuff, even having aliases doesn't work against this form of tyranny...

Sounds like it's time to send them a DMCA notice.

How so? You don't own any copyright over that information. In fact, being completely factual in nature, copyright doesn't apply.

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