Irrationally, this seems preferable to me to simply holding it hostage indefinitely. It always bothered me that they just stored all my old messages, but held them for ransom at a price I could not possibly afford to pay (something like $12k a year for my stupid little chat board that has $0 a year in revenue). It's better in my mind for them to delete my messages to free up space, because at least that's a reason I can wrap my brain around.