Hacker News Reader

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.

They are an American company.

Thought the site said Russian.

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