The point you seem to be conveying is that there is nothing wrong with the communication that was sent out. The reason your posts come across that way to me is that you keep saying things like, "that's exactly what the law is for" or "asking, as an individual [... would be ok]." And my response to you is that perhaps those other scenarios would be ok, but we are talking about this scenario, where what was done wasn't ok. It doesn't matter that other scenarios would be ok, and by repeatedly asserting that they would you are giving an appearance of endorsement to what was actually done.
Hope this clarifies my view of the conversation to this point. Personally I am not very interested in talking about other hypothetical scenarios where the law might be employed. It's a little too abstract for me right now.
> The point you seem to be conveying is that there is nothing wrong with the communication that was sent out.
The root of this thread, which I responded to, was about time spent from emails and money "burned" dealing with them because the people had to figure out whether it applied to them and/or respond appropriately.
In that context, I don't believe this is time wasted, it's time people spent learning about something they should already have paid attention to. The "wasted" time is from people or departments responding that already knew their liability (or lack thereof) and had to write another email explaining or pointing towards their documentation, or send the form letter. That actually wasted time is likely far less than was posited.
Should these researched have done this? No. Was it a complete waste of everyone's time that was contacted? I also think no, it wasn't. These were real laws and what was requested was legally required of the people that it applied to, and even for the people it didn't apply to, any random person on the internet could have sent a similar request (either correctly or incorrectly asserting their rights), and the recipients would have had to deal with it just the same. That's what I mean by "any random individual". It's not to say what the researched did was okay, but just to note that if someone is considering all the time people spent dealing with the email and figuring out if it applied to them, I do not consider that entirely wasted time. These are real laws, and people that run sites should be aware of them.
I've repeatedly said that what the researchers did is not acceptable, that they acted like assholes, etc. What I've trying to do is separate the initiating action from the outcome, and make a point about the outcome. Not for the purpose of defending the researchers, but because I think it's important that people understand the liability they expose themselves to just by running these sites, as if they do and they find that problematic, maybe we'll get enough visibility to change the laws in beneficial ways. At a minimum they'll know how to protect themselves in the future if they get a real request that needs to be dealt with within a specific time frame because of the law.
In any case, thanks for taking the time to summarize what you thought my point was. Not everyone would be willing to put in the effort in order to attempt an actual understanding with the other party in a discussion. :)
Hope this clarifies my view of the conversation to this point. Personally I am not very interested in talking about other hypothetical scenarios where the law might be employed. It's a little too abstract for me right now.