[altairprime]

Record a video of yourself manually doing this, and then file a small claims lawsuit demanding they restore your access with the video submitted as proof, once they eventually lock you out. You don’t have to claim for money, you can simply claim for restoration of service, or you can indicate that if they fail to provide access to your data, that you seek damages equal to the business and personal value of your “Rolodex file” that they misappropriated from you. (If you’re not familiar, look it up, and be sure to use that term so that the court understands the gravity of the situation.) (I am not your lawyer, this is not legal advice.)

[nerdsniper]

To be clear: there is no legal requirement for LinkedIn to restore service. They reserve the right to deny service to anyone for any or no reason.

But they might restore service even though the courts won’t “make” them.

[kelseyfrog]

Aren't you fairly likely to get a default judgement because they're unlikely to show up to court?

[altairprime]

Perhaps! But then you'd get to file a lien on Microsoft, and what a glorious day that would be. Frame it for the office wall!

The point here is that, if we don't exercise the tools available to us to have a human being judge whether Microsoft's behavior is unjust, then we'll never know if a human being would have judged Microsoft's behavior (and terms of service) as unjust. Is LinkedIn summarily destroying one's 'Rolodex' an unlawful act, regardless of whether their boilerplate permits it? One could easily speculate that LinkedIn's terms are a one-sided contract with intolerable terms that exclusively benefit themselves to the harm of the other party, and a judge might well agree if presented such an argument. We'll never know unless people try, though :)

ps. Not particularly relevant, but it came up in research, so:

> Jaffe was asked by defense counsel, "Did you care how he obtained it?" and he answered, "I don't recall thinking that at the time, no sir." Defense counsel then asked, "... all you wanted was the information, and you did not care how it was obtained?" To which Jaffe responded, "Well, I certainly didn't expect him to murder anybody for it." TRM 161. Casper testified that when he handed Jaffe the rolodex file stolen from Wolstencroft's desk Jaffe "was rather elated."

— United States v. Payner, 434 F. Supp. 113 (N.D. Ohio 1977) footnote 34

[nerdsniper]

They’re actually pretty diligent about finding relatively low-cost local lawyers to show up and provide some boilerplate.

[altairprime]

Precisely :)