As per a judge’s decree Wednesday, Google must turn over every record of every video watched by YouTube users, including users' names and IP addresses, to Viacom, which is suing Google for allowing clips of its copyrightten clips to appear on the video viewing site.
Yikes!
Viacom filed suit against Google in March 2007, seeking over $1 billion in damages for allowing users to upload clips of Viacom's copyright material. They wanna use the information to prove that infringing material is more popular than user-created videos to help prove Google is libel if found guilty of contributory infringement.
Of course, Google argues that turning over user logs is an invasion of the users’ privacy and that the law provides a safe harbor for online services as long as they stick to copyright takedown requests, but the judge described that argument as "speculative" and even used Google's own defense of its data retention policies -- that IP addresses of computers aren't personally revealing in and of themselves -- against itself to justify the move.
The ruling also forces Google to turn over data about how often each private video has been watched and by how many persons, and supply copies of all videos that have ever been taken down from the site.
Viacom even requested YouTube's source codes and Google's advertising database, but those requests were denied.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has already issued a firm reply, calling the order a violation of the Video Privacy Protection act that "threatens to expose deeply private information." Damn straight!
Jeeez…this raises so many issues. Like, how damaging is it to have a long list of ‘70s porn, puppets, furry friends, bad hair metal and foot fetish videos in your Youtube logs? Like, if I…I mean, someone, were to run for President, would that stuff ever come back to haunt me…I mean, YOU?
Wired.com: Judge Orders YouTube to Give All User Histories to Viacom
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