Wired’s Threat Level blog says that the judge in the Viacom/Google lawsuit has made a ruling forcing Google to turn over “every record of every video watched by YouTube users, including users’ names and IP addresses,” to Viacom.
Viacom is arguing that it needs the data to prove that its copyrighted material is more popular than user created videos.
Wired says:
Although Google argued that turning over the data would invade its users’ privacy, the judge’s ruling (.pdf) described that argument as “speculative” and ordered Google to turn over the logs on a set of four tera-byte hard drives.
The judge also turned Google’s own defense of its data retention policies — that IP addresses of computers aren’t personally revealing in and of themselves, against it to justify the log dump.
The EFF has responded to the ruling, calling it “a set-back to privacy rights,” that “will allow Viacom to see what you are watching on YouTube. “
Judge Orders YouTube to Give All User Histories to Viacom [Wired] (Thanks, Everyone!)
Court ruling will expose viewing habits [YouTube]
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I’m seriously wishing I voted Viacom for Worst Company In The World.
This kind of scares the crap out of me.
We should mass post “screw Viacom” videos on YouTube, then MOB them to show that homemade videos are watched more. And that we hate Viacom.
oh boy, pandora’s box is slowly opening. first, i can’t believe the judge bought the argument that viacom needs ip addresses and personally identifiable data to prove its videos are more popular than amateur vids. second, i can just envision a new spate of infringement suits against youtube users viewing such content (but not downloading it). more likely, suits against those individuals posting infringing content. finally, maybe google should take a lesson from this and stop stockpiling personally identifiable data for so long.
This is going to prove a landmark case. The real heart of the matter is that the DMCA holds uploaders, not hosts, responsible for unauthorized content. As a member of the creative industry, this is a big deal to me. Piracy is growing rapidly and simple sites like YouTube and its ilk are making it far too easy to pirate media.
I don’t like to see anyone’s privacy invaded, and this order is dangerously close to doing that. But at the same time this could help several industries that are struggling under the weight of piracy.
I am hoping Viacom wins this lawsuit, so that content hosts are forced to monitor what is put up on their sites. I would be heartbroken if I ever saw any of my work thrown up on youtube or something similar, and this would put a huge dent in that possibility.
If Viacom wins I think there will be a decrease in RIAA-style lawsuits, as hosts will become the targets, not end users. Of course users won’t be able to download pirated media anymore, but then thats a GOOD thing.
whats worse? That they have to hand over the information, or that they have it to hand over…
Is it now illegal to WATCH illegal movies?
Looks like I’m sticking to NicoVideo.
@Michael Belisle: I too wonder what will happen with my screen name on youtube beacuse mine is also my name (seangamble2)….. but I’m just guessing that for YT members like us they’re gonna do 1 of 2 things
1) Have us choose new screen names (yeah pretty unlikely)
or
2)send us overe without anonimisation
this situation sucks… if only there were a way we could legally,and quickly, send viacom,and other big media companies such as news corp., the message that this kiind of behavior on thir part is pissing we the consumers off.
@The_IT_Crone: already happend when the viacommies first filed the lawsuits but it didnt work….even when people stared puting angry messages on viacom’s profile…..which, oddly enough, is a page on youtube…I wonder if their account is still open?
That’s got to be tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of pages of documents. How is Viacom supposed to sort through all of that?
@sleze69: Exactly. YouTube lists the number of plays for each video on their website.
@ShadowFalls: I guess Viacom could contact ISPs with individual user information. But what would they say to them? “We can’t tell you how we know this, because a federal judge has told us we’d be in contempt of court … but a user at IP address xxx has recently illegally uploaded videos to YouTube. So do you think you can just give us his home address but not tell anybody we asked?”
@GamblesAC2: Some more recent reports suggest that they’ll likely figure out an anonymizing solution and Viacom will not have direct access to the data. And to think I was all excited to pitch myself as a test case for the “user names do not imply anonymity” lawsuit.
I do like the idea of being able to contest the handover of my information or even (gasp!) having a way to access everything Google knows about me. I wonder what would happen if I sent a FOIA-like request to Google. Yeah, I know they’re not a government entity, but maybe we need an FOIA for our dealings with corporations in the internet age.
@weste7679: finally, maybe google should take a lesson from this and stop stockpiling personally identifiable data for so long.
I agree. It’s alarming that it sounds like Google never deletes anything (if, for example, they turn out to have copies of every deleted or pulled video, ever).
No appeals?? I don’t understand how handing over IP address is just “speculative” when it EXACTLY identifies the user.
Fristly the only thing they’ll find is that people watch the user created ones wayy more like.. somebody on wii fit in their underwear or chicks semi stripping see the top viewed stuff.
Viacom will come up with a weak argument and then Google will counter sue, there’s no way Google doesn’t have something planed for this they’re way to big of a company now to be blind sided by something without an appeal.
You watch.
@weste7679: Expect the spate of lawsuits against children, searches for similar but non-infringing strings (e.g., “South Park” the high school in PA, not the show), and a massive sale of the data to data miners.
I don’t trust Viacom for a minute to abide by the protective order. Google/YouTube’s request to redact the user id and IP information is a reasonable one, as well as restricting the information to outside attorneys with a punitive clause if the information is leaked, and destruction of all copies of the information when the lawsuit concludes.
Of course, I also like the idea of overwhelming the Viacom lawyers with (literally) tons of useless information.
The major flaw with this verdict is one line “IP addresses of computers aren’t personally revealing in and of themselves”. With the AOL data ‘leak’ of IP addresses and search terms sleuths were easily able to identify certain persons and then connect that to possibly embarrassing search terms – breach of privacy.
Take an IP address and username, you probably have video footage of that person, from the videos you could be able to get their first name at least. Narrow that first name, age and geographic area (based on IP) – you have a good chance of find exactly who the person is.
Now everything that person has ever looked at is open to whomever. Everyone will know that John Doe likes watching foot fetish videos, or Brittany Spears videos.
This could in fact be dangerous to certain young girls who post silly videos that a pedophile would be interested in. I’m sure there are a dozen more scenarios that could be harmful to a person’s body or reputation.
This is speculation on my part, but I’ve always felt if there’s a 1 in a million chance of something happening it will happen.
I’m really surprised that with the power of Google they were not able to fight this.
@Bladefist: Contrary to the MPAA commercials you so readily believe there is nothing “criminal” to downloading your average torrent while having no commercial profit motive although it may be actionable in civil court.
Disclaimer: I am not your lawyer and this is an opinon, not legal advice.
@arcticJKL: They’re not trying to do that (in this case, at least), what it looks like they’re trying to do is show that more unique people (IPs/usernames) view *their* stuff on average as opposed to someone’s new video of their kid falling over or a meowing cat or something.
While I dislike the methods to the madness, I can’t fault Viacom for being annoyed that people on Youtube are distributing their content. And one of the best ways to show that Youtube is making money off of your own content is to show how many unique people are visiting that content, how many are even coming back to see it again and again, etc.
I would even go so far as to request the clickthrough rates for the targeted advertising that appears on those videos, just to see if the rate is higher than content that isn’t yours, or just to show that people going to see “Video X” are very likely to clickthrough the ads associated with it.
Users should counter sue for invasion of privacy
Its pretty clear that once Viacom has this data the users can expect to see their lawsuits jump. The old guard of content is not happy with taking your money at POS they want it over and over and over. So lets cut back, way back on the consumption everywhere, period.
@sleze69: so people wouldn’t bitch about it.
@Michael Belisle: “And to think I was all excited to pitch myself as a test case for the “user names do not imply anonymity” lawsuit”. lol… Thats exactly what I was thinking.
@ShadowFalls:
your right, for viacom this isnt about proving video viewership this is all about collecting personally Identifiable info most likely for direct marketing or to simply find a reason to sue someone for which they had no reason to before. and also whats to stop viacom from simpily puting an IP tracking bug on any one of the IP adresses that they recive… I mean its happend before, The cult of scientology has put trackers on the IP’s of their precived enemies. so whats to stop a multi-national media conglomerate from using a discrete tracking bug. either way viacom is becoming dangerous to mess with….well leagly anyway.
@GamblesAC2: umm okay the coding I used on that comment didnt work out too well…..
The court’s decision to award a Viacom even a partial victory like this shows that the government sponsors corporate greed over the privacy rights of their citizens. If there’s a way for people to show solidarity with Google against Viacom, please direct me to one.
So if I’m understanding this right, Google will share user info with Viacom to fight piracy, and the Chinese government to fight dissent, but not the FBI to fight child pornographers.
Wow.
Time to boycott Viacomm and these privacy destroying companies
I really hope Google challenges this to keep user privacy in place. They can easily turn over logs on hits-per-video without admitting what usernames or what IPs watched them. *sigh*