Next Neflix Prize cancelled due to privacy concerns

About five months ago we announced that Netflix would sponsor a sequel to the Netflix Prize. We've given a lot thought to how to sponsor a contest that discovers more about the predictability of Netflix members' movie watching behavior while always ensuring we protect Netflix members' privacy.

In the past few months, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) asked us how a Netflix Prize sequel might affect Netflix members' privacy, and a lawsuit was filed by KamberLaw LLC pertaining to the sequel.

We have reached an understanding with the FTC and have settled the lawsuit with plaintiffs. The resolution to both matters involves certain parameters for how we use Netflix data in any future research programs.

In light of all this, we have decided to not pursue the Netflix Prize sequel that we announced on August 6, 2009.

We will continue to explore ways to collaborate with the research community and improve our recommendations system so we can constantly improve the movie recommendations we make for you. So stay tuned.

Read more.

Gregory PS: Among more than a hundred comments on this Netflix blog post, most regretted the cancellation. One of the more interesting comments was that there was no good way to anonymize the data.

See also

Netflix's Impending (But Still Avoidable) Multi-Million Dollar Privacy Blunder, By Paul Ohm, Sep 2009.

Privacy Concerns Put the Kibosh on the Netflix Prize, Mashable

Netflix Cancels Contest After Concerns Are Raised About Privacy, New York Times

Netflix settles privacy lawsuit, ditches $1 million contest, Ars Technica

The Second Netflix Challenge and Privacy Research, O'Reilly Radar

An open letter to Netflix from the authors of the de-anonymization paper, Arvind Narayanan and Vitaly Shmatikov

Data privacy researchers will be happy to work with you rather than against you

Advancing science vs. compromising privacy, Galit Shmueli

It looks like the data mining community needs to come up with some data disclosure policies that support predictive analytics.

Comments

Matatovy
The techniques are pertrubation an anonymization and known as privacy-preserving data mining

GregoryPS
While re-identification research (such as Arvind Narayanan and Vitaly Shmatikov, userweb.cs.utexas.edu/~shmat/netflix-faq.html) showed that some people can be identified, it did not show that all people rentals can be identified.

I regret the cancellation as a big loss for research ! There could be an opt-in mechanism, and I (and I think a great majority of Netflix subscribers) will gladly make out rental data available for research.