Judge Orders YouTube to Give User Data to Viacom
If you wanted to keep your obsession with hyperactive YouTube phenomeon “Fred” a secret, you’re in for some bad news. A federal judge yesterday ordered that records of every video watched on YouTube be handed over to Viacom as part of its ongoing $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against Google.
According to the ruling:
The motion to compel production of all data from the Logging database concerning each time a YouTube video has been viewed on the YouTube website or through embedding on a third-party website is granted.
In case you were wondering::
Defendants’ “Logging” database contains, for each instance a video is watched, the unique “login ID” of the user who watched it, the time when the user started to watch the video, the internet protocol address other devices connected to the internet use to identify the user’s computer (“IP address”), and the identifier for the video.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is up in arms over the ruling and has a breakdown of how this decision may actually violate federal law.
The court dismissed Google’s argument that handing over the data would violate its user’s privacy concerns, saying “But defendants cite no authority barring them from disclosing such information in civil discovery proceedings, and their privacy concerns are speculative.”
Over at TechCrunch, Michael Arrington writes that there’s only one use for all this data Viacom is to receive: to sue individual users (or at least threaten to) who have watched copyrighted material on YouTube.
The ruling was made over Google’s objections, and hopefully Google will take all necessary action to challenge the order (or potentially face class action lawsuits).
But it wasn’t a total loss for Google yesterday. The judge ruled that the company did not have to hand over YouTube’s source code. The company can rest easy that no one else will build a YouTube clone.
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[...] federal judge ordered YouTube to hand over its user data to Viacom. If it stands (the Electronic Frontier Foundation says the judge’s order violates [...]
Fill Your Grill With Kanye, Whedon and YouTube - GigaOM on July 3rd, 2008 at 2:00 pm - Permalink
Ha. Good luck sorting through all that data and attempting to threaten billions of people.
As our world evolves, copyright must evolve as well. It’s the only way.
Liz on July 3rd, 2008 at 7:32 pm - Permalink
They don’t have to sue billions, Liz. Just suing a handful will spread enough fear.
Mike Abundo on July 3rd, 2008 at 9:20 pm - Permalink
Welcome to the world where everyone’s a criminal.
Foolster41 on July 3rd, 2008 at 10:28 pm - Permalink
[...] YouTube chose Independence Day to release a response to the court order it received yesterday to hand over user information to Viacom as part the media giant’s ongoing $1 billion lawsuit against the video sharing [...]
YouTube Responds to Court Order « NewTeeVee on July 4th, 2008 at 5:20 pm - Permalink
[...] federal judge ordered YouTube to hand over its user data to Viacom. If it stands (the Electronic Frontier Foundation says the judge’s order violates [...]
Yatching Newsly | Fill Your Grill With Kanye, Whedon and YouTube on July 6th, 2008 at 2:14 am - Permalink
[...] Denies it Wants YouTube Data Viacom has issued a statement about the recent court ruling that ordered YouTube to hand over its user data to the media giant. The full text is reprinted [...]
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[...] from the company told me Friday. The blog-o-sphere (us included) erupted over the past week after a judge ordered YouTube to hand over its user data to Viacom as part of its ongoing $1 billion copyright lawsuit. [...]
Viacom: Easy Tiger, We Don’t Want Your Data « NewTeeVee on July 12th, 2008 at 12:00 pm - Permalink
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[...] to get caught up on this story? Here’s the background on the latest skirmish: First a federal judge ordered YouTube to hand over its user data to Viacom. Then Google asked to have user identifying [...]
Court Sides With YouTube on User Data « NewTeeVee on July 15th, 2008 at 9:49 am - Permalink