Apols I should have posted this here too. Here's my update on where we're at with Aston...
Thanks all, for your patience. As many of you have surmised we’ve been in some back and forth with Aston Uni to try to establish exactly what’s gone on: what MN data they hold, how they obtained it, for what purpose, how it’s stored etc.
Whilst we have a number of concerns, it’s worth saying upfront that Aston is adamant that the dataset has never been used to attempt to identify individual posters and that is not the purpose of their research; and we have no reason to disbelieve them on that front.
That said, we do believe that Aston has behaved unethically and unlawfully by scraping our website without seeking prior permission and in breach of our copyright, to obtain two datasets for forensic linguistic research purposes. The first set was obtained in 2019 and entailed the scraping of a large volume of posts. The second (for the PHD student’s research) was obtained in January 2024 and involves a much smaller number of posts.
Aston University’s Intellectual Property Policy, as listed on the university website says:
“It is an infringement of copyright in a work to copy the whole or a substantial part of the work, whether manually, electronically or otherwise, without authorisation or licence from the copyright owner. Substantial is measured by reference to quality and therefore copying of even a small part could be an infringement. This is the case even if the work is freely accessible and available in the public domain, including online, unless a licence is clearly provided and the proposed activities fall with [sic] the scope of the licence.”
Mumsnet’s terms of use (though updated in Nov 23 to specifically prohibit scraping) have always stated clearly that “the web site and its contents are copyright Mumsnet, all rights reserved”
Mumsnet is a rich source of information and almost unique in being a large female-dominated online discussion forum - so we do appreciate why it’s very attractive to researchers. However, we are extremely careful about what research we will allow and who we permit to do it. We are more likely to consent to projects that elevate women’s voices, or research that could be used to design products, services or policies to make parents’ lives easier. Examples of research project we’ve consented to in the past are:
Developing models to assist the diagnosis of mental health conditions, such as postnatal depression, and the identification of individuals at risk. [Turing Institute]
Quantifying the real impact of the reality of lived experiences of women in the UK with regards to violence against women and girls. [Bolton University]
I very much doubt we would have agreed to the creation of a sandbox for forensic linguistics without assurances about how the data was being used and for what purpose. We certainly wouldn’t have agreed to the holding of the dataset for further research projects to be decided upon at the discretion of the University.
We also have concerns about Aston’s ethical approval process (which we have raised with the Vice Chancellor). Specifically, we do not believe that appropriate consideration has been given to the potential risk of harm caused by the PHD’s research to the Mumsnet website, its reputation and its community.
Consequently we have asked Aston University to immediately cease and desist all scraping activities, to immediately destroy both datasets and to provide a written assurance that they will refrain from any further unauthorised access or use of our content.
We will of course update you as and when we can.