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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