Netflix Cancels Plans For New Netflix Prize As Part Of Privacy Lawsuit Settlement
from the careful-what-you-crowdsource dept
Netflix, of course, received tons of attention and (apparently) a lot of valuable research, with its Netflix prize competition, that allowed anyone to take a bunch of Netflix data and try to improve on Netflix's ranking algorithm. Of course, whenever you're dealing with "anonymized data" there are questions about whether or not it can really be anonymous. In nearly every case, someone figures out how to "re-nonymize" at least some of the data. And, of course, that also happened with the original Netflix Prize data. This was especially troubling for Netflix because of the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), 18 USC 2710, a special law that was passed after Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork ran into some trouble when his movie rental lists were made public, which made it specifically illegal to reveal movie rental data. And thus... a lawsuit was born, late last year.Netflix has announced that it has now settled the lawsuit, but as a part of that settlement it is canceling the plans it had announced for additional Netflix prizes. While the company can still do contests in the future, it will need to make sure that the data cannot be reconnected to an actual person, which may be quite difficult in practice. This does raise some interesting questions for other attempts to crowdsource research. There are certainly benefits to opening up data to a community of smart people -- but companies are going to need to be extra careful in those settings in dealing with privacy issues.
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Filed Under: anonymize, crowdsourcing, data, movies, privacy
Companies: netflix
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welp
now they're just circling the drain, really. I give it 2 years.
Oh well, mission creep affects every success that isn't ready for it, and is what is happening to netflix right now.
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Re: welp
But seriously, I think the investments they have made in getting their players on tons of set top devices and expanding their digital library are the smartest moves they've made for surviving the ongoing transition to digital distribution. They've even got a revenue model around it that it seems more than a few people are willing to stomach for the convenience granted.
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Re: welp
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