Google must divulge YouTube log

Google must divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched any video on YouTube, a US court has ruled.

The ruling comes as part of Google's legal battle with Viacom over allegations of copyright infringement.

Digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) called the ruling a "set-back to privacy rights".

The viewing log, which will be handed to Viacom, contains the log-in ID of users, the computer IP address (online identifier) and video clip details.

While the legal battle between the two firms is being contested in the US, it is thought the ruling will apply to YouTube users and their viewing habits everywhere.

Viacom, which owns MTV and Paramount Pictures, has alleged that YouTube is guilty of massive copyright infringement.

The UK's Premier League association is also seeking class action status with Viacom on the issue, alleging YouTube, which was bought by Google in 2006, has been used to watch football highlights.

Legal action

When it initiated legal action in March 2007 Viacom said it had identified about 160,000 unauthorised clips of its programmes on the website, which had been viewed more than 1.5 billion times.

Following the launch of its billion-dollar lawsuit, YouTube introduced filtering tools in an effort to prevent copyright materials from appearing on the site.

The US court declined Viacom's request that Google be forced to hand over the source code of YouTube, saying it was a "trade secret" that should not be disclosed.

But it said privacy concerns expressed by Google about handing over the log were "speculative".

Google's senior litigation counsel Catherine Lacavera said in a statement: "We are disappointed the court granted Viacom's over-reaching demand for viewing history.

"We will ask Viacom to respect users' privacy and allow us to anonymise the logs before producing them under the court's order."

The ruling will see the viewing habits of millions of YouTube users given to Viacom, totalling more than 12 terabytes of data.

Viacom said it wanted the data to "compare the attractiveness of allegedly infringing video with that of non-infringing videos."

'Erroneous ruling'

Leading privacy expert Simon Davies told BBC News that the privacy of millions of YouTube users was threatened.

He said: "The chickens have come home to roost for Google.

"Their arrogance and refusal to listen to friendly advice has resulted in the privacy of tens of millions being placed under threat."

Mr Davies said privacy campaigners had warned Google for years that IP addresses were personally identifiable information.

Google pledged last year to anonymise IP addresses for search information but it has said nothing about YouTube data.

Mr Davies said: "Governments and organisations are realising that companies like Google have a warehouse full of data. And while that data is stored it is under threat of being used and putting privacy in danger."

The EFF said: "The Court's erroneous ruling is a set-back to privacy rights, and will allow Viacom to see what you are watching on YouTube.

"We urge Viacom to back off this overbroad request and Google to take all steps necessary to challenge this order and protect the rights of its users."

The body said the ruling was also potentially unlawful because the log data did contain personally identifiable data.

The court also ruled that Google disclose to Viacom the details of all videos that have been removed from the site for any reason.


Source: BBC NEWS | Technology | Google must divulge YouTube log



anyone read thru youtube's/google's privacy policy? lol

whoa wtf
so now viacom will know every video we watch on youtube??
and our IP adress?
and if someone watches something that is copyright, do they get in trouble?
or does the person who upload it get in trouble?

well they haven't got the logs yet afaik, but yeah they will be able to know what videos you have watched on youtube by your IP address (SIPs have logs of who has what IP at what times).. I dunno if it's the uploader and the watcher that gets into trouble, I'd imagine it'd just be the uploader...

Quote:

Viacom said it wanted the data to "compare the attractiveness of allegedly infringing video with that of non-infringing videos."

apparently they just want the logs to see if illegally uploaded copyrighted videos are more popular than non copyrighted videos

Viacom were the ones who got my Ludacris Remix vids deleted

ohh fuck dude that's not good

was expecting a discussion about this.. guess not then lol.................

so should I delete the old school video's I uploaded?
its not like Im making money off of them, I just put them up for people to have a chance to see some old school flavor

it's up to you lol... you could just wait and see what happens... if they aren't protected by viacom then you should be fine.... until whoever owns the copyright of them notices and wants them removed...

fuck viacom.

Compare?! Thats stupid... obviously the copyright videos are gonna be more popular. No one wants to watch crappy home-made videos.

If theyre gonan be takin IPs then i bet theyll follow it up back monitoring them to see if the do any other illegal stuff.

why do they need our I.P address for...shit big companies got too much power and info nowadays

Quote:

Originally Posted by showbiznine Compare?! Thats stupid... obviously the copyright videos are gonna be more popular. No one wants to watch crappy home-made videos. If theyre gonan be takin IPs then i bet theyll follow it up back monitoring them to see if the do any other illegal stuff.

funilly enough youtube was made for people to share their homemade videos, just because (i guess) the majority of the videos aren't doesn't mean it's right....

a lot of people do like watching homemade videos, i for one (when I rarely go on youtube)... the quality of them usually isn't so bad that you can't watch them.....


the last I heard about the IP's viacom were working with youtube/google so they (viacom) wouldn't get them linked with the usernames.. or something...

I'm thinking beyond youtube entirely - I'm thinking about logs for Bittorrent traffic, etc. etc. If your IP was so much as IMPLICATED in this, and then they caught your IP on BT or whatever else, downloading whatever Viacom material might be on BT or whatever else, then they'd give you both barrels since you're a "repeat offender".

if the viewer got in trouble for watching copywritten material illegally.........3/4 of the american population would be in jail...it'd cost too much to execute that................