The Legal Genealogist points me to the fact that AncestryDNA is now going to work on allowing users to download their data. Here’s the specific section:
AncestryDNA believes that our customers have the right to their own genetic data. It is your DNA, after all. So we’re working to provide access to your raw DNA data in early 2013, which includes related security enhancements to ensure its safety during every step of the process. Moving forward, we plan to add even more tools and improvements for our customers, and any new features will be available to all AncestryDNA members.
If the rights of the customers to own their own data were so important to them they should have front-loaded this feature. As it is, they didn’t, and as many bloggers noted the firm had stated they didn’t have plans to unroll this feature in the near future. What changed? I don’t know the details, but I suspect they realized that many of us who complained in the past were going to continue to complain constantly. Combined with the contrast with its competitors, like 23andMe, and I assume they realized this just wasn’t going to solve itself if they ignored …