Its this type of perspective that encourages our community to condone activities that we would frown upon in other circumstances.
"Did I gain more than I lost?" isn't the type of hacker we should be striving to be.
*I'm not a lawyer but wouldn't be surprised if what they did is illegal.
At what point does UK law have jurisdiction?
On the other hand; DPA violation doesn't result in prison, just a (potentially large) fine.
On the third hand, its quite possible that Path did not violate the DPA (although its possible they did). The DPA, in short states that you have to gather personal info for a specific, consensual purpose, and not use it for any other, and also store it in a way that protects it from loss/theft/misuse - where misuse includes deciding 6 months down the line to use it for another purpose. It also means that if your 'purpose' for holding that information ceases, you are legally obligated to purge the data - your legal permission to hold ends.
So; was there consent - almost certainly not, hence possible DPA violation. But once it was clear they had no broad public consent - they immediately purged the data, so possibly no _deliberate_ violation, and certainly a demonstration of willingness to correct the situation.
I'm not sure of the Data Protection Act has any limitations on which companies it covers, but since Path put an app in the UK App Store (they could have easily excluded it), that would seem to be ample jurisdiction from my armchair-internet-lawyer standpoint.
[For the record, I don't think they should go to jail]
What specifically do you want to happen? You say you want "Silicon Valley" to "publicly and vocally [condemn] this type of activity," but what would that actually mean? Last I checked, "Silicon Valley" doesn't exist as some unified entity that can issue public statements. Heck, Hacker News is some approximation of the culture of Silicon Valley, and the front page was filled with rage.
Also, incidentally, I find it interesting that you cite a dictionary definition for a word that in no way corroborates your usage of the word, even though I think I agree with your underlying point. Path didn't "take and carry away" anything, and the contacts on your phone hardly constitute "personal goods or property."
Do a search on Twitter for the top tweets that link to Path's blog apology. Nearly every major figure in tech (99% in "The Valley") just accepted their apology and moved on.
Wouldnt have happened with other companies like Google or Facebook and shouldnt have happened here.
> Wouldnt have happened with other companies like Google or Facebook and shouldnt have happened here.
People move on quickly after Google or Facebook screw up. There have been several times where people were enraged at Facebook's default privacy settings, and I never saw much discussion 24 hours after each story broke. The same goes with Apple: I can't recall any privacy-related issues other than the coordinates being stored on the phone, but a similar issue was all of the weird app rejections and fuzzy rules surrounding the App Store. Each time, people were outraged, and then the discussion cools down. I think this is inevitable, and I don't think it necessarily means that no good came out of the situation.
Which brings me to another topic: it's hard out there to be successful and always do the right thing. Sometimes you'll have to cut corners in the attempt to gain an edge, however meaningless an inconsequential to the big picture it may seem at the time, because big strong companies are built on a stream of small, repetitive successes, not big wins.
If Path was taking your address book and selling it to spammers, and forgot to make that opt-in or out (as many services do), then after being confronted with this apologized and made that optional. That would NOT BE OK. That's what Facebook and Google would have likely done (since that's basically their business model), and likely why you have the impression that they wouldn't be let off the hook as easily.
What Path was actually doing with the address book is crucial here to whether the apology and quick response to amend their ways (FB and G tend to seriously drag their feet on responses) should result in forgiveness and caution towards them in the future, or the harsher response you advocate.
Do not misconstrue this as Path apologism, because I do think what Path did was very wrong--hence the requirement for them to apologize in a way that I thought was sincere and comprehending of the source of the outrage (many similar apologies are tone deaf and come off like "I am sorry you are having a problem" vs. "I'm sorry we caused a problem")--I just think they haven't made a deep ethical mistake, but rather an unfortunate oversight well deserving of castigation that they've begun to atone for.
If its in the low numbers, probably not enough people use it to cause a mob riot.
I personally don't use it at all.
Limiting the number of possible friends means a smaller network, and a smaller user base.
That you "personally" don't use it means nothing.
