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Except email, there is nothing private on HN to raise privacy issue. Public internet is written in ink.

by arihant 11y ago

e12e 11y ago
Perhaps not in the content. But I'm not so sure there might not be actual legal issues (in jurisdiction that have privacy/data protection laws) with regards to stuff like being able to see patterns in login-times (based on post meta data), and similar. It's tenuous -- but just because things are a) on-line in the form of the main hn site, and b) accessible through the api, doesn't automatically mean that giving raw access to the data doesn't carry with it implications for whether or not the data should be considered personal/(more)sensitive. I'm assuming this data set offers something the API doesn't (that's the point of uploading it, right? Other than just being an easy way for others to "back up" the hn data) -- and that can very well mean there are privacy/personal data implications. I'm mostly stating this because of the principle, not because I think it's anything wrong with this concrete upload of hn data (and wrong != legal/illegal anyway). As an example, at least in Norway, while you may have two separate databases that are linked to people, such as a database of cars passing through toll booths, and credit card charges from a large bar/restaurant chain -- it would generally be illegal to link the two.
- beeboop 11y ago
  It's sort of a moot point. It's not especially difficult to scrape HN and compile a dataset like this for yourself.
  - andreasvc 11y ago
    I don't see how difficulty has any bearing on privacy or copyright issues.
  - e12e 11y ago
    It's a little like saying it's easy enough to make your own wine and sell it to minors. It is, but that doesn't make it legal.
    - arihant 11y ago
      No it's like that wine is available for everyone to buy anyway (via HTTP) and people are arguing that perhaps the bottled version (via non-HTTP protocol) should be age limited while keeping non-bottled version as is.

Except email, there is nothing private on HN to raise privacy issue. Public internet is written in ink.

by arihant 11y ago

Except email, there is nothing private on HN to raise privacy issue. Public internet is written in ink.

e12e 11y ago

Perhaps not in the content. But I'm not so sure there might not be actual legal issues (in jurisdiction that have privacy/data protection laws) with regards to stuff like being able to see patterns in login-times (based on post meta data), and similar. It's tenuous -- but just because things are a) on-line in the form of the main hn site, and b) accessible through the api, doesn't automatically mean that giving raw access to the data doesn't carry with it implications for whether or not the data should be considered personal/(more)sensitive. I'm assuming this data set offers something the API doesn't (that's the point of uploading it, right? Other than just being an easy way for others to "back up" the hn data) -- and that can very well mean there are privacy/personal data implications. I'm mostly stating this because of the principle, not because I think it's anything wrong with this concrete upload of hn data (and wrong != legal/illegal anyway). As an example, at least in Norway, while you may have two separate databases that are linked to people, such as a database of cars passing through toll booths, and credit card charges from a large bar/restaurant chain -- it would generally be illegal to link the two.

beeboop 11y ago
It's sort of a moot point. It's not especially difficult to scrape HN and compile a dataset like this for yourself.
- andreasvc 11y ago
  I don't see how difficulty has any bearing on privacy or copyright issues.
- e12e 11y ago
  It's a little like saying it's easy enough to make your own wine and sell it to minors. It is, but that doesn't make it legal.
  - arihant 11y ago
    No it's like that wine is available for everyone to buy anyway (via HTTP) and people are arguing that perhaps the bottled version (via non-HTTP protocol) should be age limited while keeping non-bottled version as is.