YouTube Gives 24 Poster’s Name to Fox

Fox is cracking down on leaked 24 episodes, and has gotten YouTube’s support. In January, we covered the episodes’ appearance on torrent trackers prior to the start of the season. The shows also showed up on YouTube, and 20th Century Fox Television went to court to try to extract the identity of the uploader, “EcoTotal.” GooTube has complied, reports internetnews.com.

While YouTube had disclosed user names in the past, this appears to be the first time it has done so under parent Google, which has famously gone to bat to protect users’ privacy. (Marshall Kirkpatrick, writing at TechCrunch, takes this angle, and see also initial coverage on the topic from the Hollywood Reporter in January.)

Fox reportedly found the episodes on YouTube on January 8, two days after we first wrote about them being leaked on peer-to-peer networks. Later, Fox itself released the episodes on MySpace and on DVD.

Some more details: The YouTube user “EcoTOTAL” (account no longer exists) had also uploaded episodes of Fox’s The Simpsons. Fox also subpoenaed another sharing site, LiveDigital, to disclose the identity of a user who uploaded 24 episodes. LiveDigital also complied with the request, Fox told internetnews.com.