6 ms·

the cynic in me says: why risk legal issues, however small they may or may not be, when doing literally nothing sidesteps that issue? if only 1 user thinks of s

by girst 7y ago

the cynic in me says: why risk legal issues, however small they may or may not be, when doing literally nothing sidesteps that issue? if only 1 user thinks of suing you, legal gets involved, maybe even external attorneys. also, who will pay for possibly hundreds of man-hours of work cleaning up the data?

pmart123 7y ago
I don't think that's the cynic in you. That likely is the truth (legal plus labor).
luckylion 7y ago
As for cleaning up the data: I don't think that's a large task. Whatever is published now has either been cleaned or is just as problematic from a legal standpoint (possibly more so because it's shared publicly, not shared with a contractually obligated third party). You're probably right though regarding "not doing anything isn't doing something wrong". But still, saving lots of computing resources, get good PR and friendly news coverage, that has to be worth something.
- ghaff 7y ago
  To a first approximation, there's no PR or friendly news coverage. 99.999% of even the tech world doesn't care. Meanwhile, the effort involved is no one's day job. Someone is far more likely to hear "Why are you wasting your time on this?" than "attaboy!"
  - luckylion 7y ago
    Thanks for the perspective, that makes sense to me. I tend to assume that having somebody work on stuff like that is a rounding error for even the smallest department at Yahoo, but as you point out everybody has to justify how they're spending their time to somebody.
- drivebycomment 7y ago
  I think you are significantly underestimating the amount of work necessary as well as large uncertainty due to potential legal complications.
ghaff 7y ago
I assume your downvotes are a case of shooting the messenger because that's absolutely the case. See also open sourcing or otherwise releasing abandonware etc. As a company, there is essentially no upside and there are plenty of downsides including just the time and effort to do even fairly cursory due diligence. Plenty of companies are more or less willing to just turn a blind eye if someone else archives things without explicit authorization. But that's different from explicitly doing it yourself. You don't need to be a cynic to think this. Anyone who thinks otherwise is at best naive.

by girst 7y ago

pmart123 7y ago

I don't think that's the cynic in you. That likely is the truth (legal plus labor).

luckylion 7y ago

As for cleaning up the data: I don't think that's a large task. Whatever is published now has either been cleaned or is just as problematic from a legal standpoint (possibly more so because it's shared publicly, not shared with a contractually obligated third party). You're probably right though regarding "not doing anything isn't doing something wrong". But still, saving lots of computing resources, get good PR and friendly news coverage, that has to be worth something.

ghaff 7y ago
To a first approximation, there's no PR or friendly news coverage. 99.999% of even the tech world doesn't care. Meanwhile, the effort involved is no one's day job. Someone is far more likely to hear "Why are you wasting your time on this?" than "attaboy!"
- luckylion 7y ago
  Thanks for the perspective, that makes sense to me. I tend to assume that having somebody work on stuff like that is a rounding error for even the smallest department at Yahoo, but as you point out everybody has to justify how they're spending their time to somebody.
drivebycomment 7y ago
I think you are significantly underestimating the amount of work necessary as well as large uncertainty due to potential legal complications.

ghaff 7y ago

I assume your downvotes are a case of shooting the messenger because that's absolutely the case. See also open sourcing or otherwise releasing abandonware etc. As a company, there is essentially no upside and there are plenty of downsides including just the time and effort to do even fairly cursory due diligence. Plenty of companies are more or less willing to just turn a blind eye if someone else archives things without explicit authorization. But that's different from explicitly doing it yourself. You don't need to be a cynic to think this. Anyone who thinks otherwise is at best naive.