What exactly was Hottolink buying?
http://www.fisco.co.jp/uploads/hottolink_20150304_e.pdf>Oct. 2012: Entered into an exclusive commercial licensing agreement with Tokyo Plus Co., Ltd. and Mirai Kensaku Brazil, LLC, the operators of the 2channel site, for information posted on the 2channel siteTalking about hot-link Inc.,.
Every original messages are protected by copyright.
Until six years ago, Search engines in Japan had been illegal so that Yahoo Japan put their servers in US. Google Japan servers are in US, of course.
In Japanese copyright law at that time, you can't upload contents without permission, even it is search engines.
hotlink Inc., provided custom search engines for clients for marketing purpose,
So, the company need 2ch permission to make the search engines.
And hot link is a public company in Japanese stock market.
If they are lying, you can get tons of money by suing them. Go ahead. Get rich. :)
Like this one,
https://gnip.com/sources/twitter/What hotlink., Inc. wants is publicly available text messages.
They don't want any personal information.