Your missing the point of the analogy. The idea is focus on customer acquisition in a niche rather than trying to go big with VC funding/IPO. You could have just as easily replaced "Italian restaurant" with "local flower shop" or whatever.
YC has connections, but in the end its up to you to make your startup successful. With your experience, you should be able to bootstrap yourself into a profitable software business. But this "Italian restaurant" style of a software company doesnt interest many VCs. Most VCs are looking for the next big thing.
You speak truth python. YC is a good idea when you have your idea, and need some cash/guidance to get started. But once you have customers, even if your not "ramen profitable", you are beyond YC.
I wrote this data import module for my web app this morning. It reads csv and xls flat file data and imports it into by database and then displays a preview of the data to the user. If you have time please try it out and let me know any problems. Thank you.
>> we are talking about the equivalent of the bank publishing the customer's driver's license information in a newspaper with their name obscured.
Its more like the DMV publishing driving record history with any identifying info removed, and then these people putting up some info on their driving record (along with identifying info) on a second website/db. Then someone can uses this second website (and the cross correlation algorithm) to id their record in the DMV publication and get more info on their driving record. Had those people not put any info on the second website their record could not be identified in the DMV publication.
Im not saying Netflix is innocent if they knew that such a cross-correlation algorithm existed. Im just saying that I dont want to live in society where a company can be sued for
everything that can go wrong, atleast when that company is taking every precaution using state of the art knowledge. If netflix failed to hire db security experts to notify them on this possibility, then yes sue them. I dont know enough about db security to say if this hole was known when netflix launched the contest.
>>IIRC, they were warned about the fact that the second prize was revealing too much information, but went forward with it anyways.
I did not know that. That changes my opinion about Netflix acting in "good faith".
The argument I was making is rooted in my belief that in order to have a healthy environment for business enterprise, your legal system cannot be setup to punish innovation whenever something doesnt go as planned. There needs to be balance, i.e. for medical innovation the bar is higher than for movie ratings.
>>If they know that the information can be de-anonymized using publicly available information, have they really made a good-faith effort?
If your premise that Netflix knew the db could be de-anonymized is correct, then its not "good faith". Otherwise, Netflix could argue it did everything it said it would do in its TOS, and didnt foresee the hackers exploit.
Whether that makes them liable or not is what Im asking. Im not a lawyer.
The reason the bank robbery example is irrelevant is banks say in their TOS that your money is 100% protected up to the FDIC limit. So, Netflix TOS said it would make its db internally anonymized, which it did. Clever cross-correlating made this not enough.
I agree that if Netflix knew the data could be de-anonymized then they are liable. Just like if I bank knows that an identity thief is the emptying a customers bank account and does not stop it, they are liable.
Sometimes you release people (sometimes murders) because of a thing called a constitution...a case where there is liability for NOT releasing the murderer.