He wasn’t threatened harshly. He was told his data would become read-only, which he took at face value and assumed his data would remain safe. Then suddenly he was told the data would be deleted within seven days.
> He wasn’t threatened harshly. [...] he was told the data would be deleted within seven days
How exactly is that not a harsh threat? Sounds like a harsh threat to me. They were nice before, he didn't comply, now they're jerks. But it remains just a threat unless they actually wipe the data. Which they won't, because he's surely downloading it right now while we yell about it on HN.
And there’s no practical way to download that amount of data within seven days, just based on the bandwidth this would require. The situation would be totally different if they gave him six months notice for the deletion.
I think you're misunderstanding the contention upthread and confusing the threat ("we'll delete all your stuff in 7 days") with the actual enforcement of that threat (deleting said data, which hasn't happened, and I'm betting almost certainly won't as the guy will find some way to comply).
The poster upthread was trying (vainly, I guess) to make a distinction between the two.
