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 and video clip details.
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.
Don’t we all trust Viacom?
Nice for courts to render privacy policies useless!
So does this mean that Viacom will then get to sue everyone who viewed a Viacom owned video?
does google even store this information?
One of many reasons to invest time more wisely.
What a surprise.
The viewing records were ordered turned over by a Republican Judge: Louis L. Stanton
And so they erode our personal freedoms, one little item at a time. If Google agrees to release the records, they set/affirm precedent, so additional information about individuals can be extracted from other companies.
It’s little things like this that are leading the US into becoming a totalitarian state.
I guess that by telling Viacom who watched a football clip we are helping defeat the terrorists and breaking up a potential child porn ring (people that watch youtube need to be tracked… they are probably ‘liberals’)
Do I trust viacom? I didn’t think the words trust and the name of a media company belonged in the same sentence with out a negative in it somewhere.
The question was meant to be a joke wasn’t it?
Another reason why Google sucks.
If you don’t save logs, you will never have to give them to the Gov.
Try ixquick.com for search. They only save logs for 2 days. Sorry W !!!
“You know Napster could’ve won that case.” Why did the video end when it just getting good.
I’m skeptical that Napster will make for that easy of a case. The Court was so narrow in the ruling of Napster that it was completely unclear how the court would rule in subsequent cases.
Grokster was similar, very very narrow ruling. Grokster it was important that the founders had some ill intent, they wanted to scoop up the Napster addicts with a new service. They pretty much wanted Grokster to be Napster 2.0.
YouTube/Google doesn’t have ill will, they weren’t talking about how they were going to become a din of piracy.
If YouTube and Google allow me to watch something that’s illegal (a flawed statement in and of itself), it seems they would have more to lose than I by turning this data over.
Simple solution: post all of Viacom employee’s log file searches online. That would be a hoot.
Another simple solution – print the logs on paper and FedEx them collect.
I dunno — I read somewhere that Google was just a CIA front anyway, so this sort of thing was like waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The revolution will not be YouTubed
Who’s the f*ckwad sucking crappy beer? Rupely’s an idiot too. As if he could discern a legal precedent from a wort on his ass. Unbelievable. I like Dvorak’s nuclear-option scenario, where google blocks viacom properties from its search. It would be a risky move because like all “wars,” the risk increases as the ability to predict outcomes diminishes. In other words, anything could happen.
#11 MikeR gets the best comment of the day award! Brilliant…
“So does this mean that Viacom will then get to sue everyone who viewed a Viacom owned video?”
No, not at all. The VIACOMmunist Secret Police will simply be knocking on your door in the dead of night to whisk you away, never to be heard from again.
Yet another great/stupid repeat of history where radio was fought tooth and nail for “giving copyrighted music away for free” with the thought that it was going to destroy sales of records and the recording artists themselves. And, TA DA! It merely caused a monsterous BOOM in record sales and the commercial music industry has been awash in money they never really wanted but still keep taking to the bank anyway.
How many $50,000,000 law suits could Viacom weather by people suing it for extracting private personal information without their permission, before they gave this up?
sounds like Sumner has youtube by the shorthairs. why, he’s probably chuckling about it right now as he swims naked in his private pool.
Google provides a lot of free advertisinig for Viacom. Maybe Google should only list Viacom properties if they PAY, I’m sure they’ll shut their frackin pie hole when they get a bill for $2 billion dollars.
I have no problem with this at all. In fact, I just fished my personal log out of the toilet and sent it to Viacom. (viacourier of course)
I for one welcome our ViaCom overlords!
Remember to always FLUSH TWICE, its a long way to ViaCom Corporate.
Everyone should goto YouTube and watch a non-infringing video or two or three etc.
Here’s hoping Sumner Redstone drops dead soon.
#24 – Get your own handle will ya.
#3, “does Google even store this information?”
Apparently so. I read that they store this info for at least a few days to data mine for their search engine. I don’t believe they store this info after they are done.
#2 “does this mean that Viacom will then get to sue everyone?”
Viacom doesn’t care about you, but it does care about what you are watching. They are going to charge Google for each and every Viacom property viewed. Follow the money!
I bet by this time Google is wondering what fit of insanity made them buy YouTube, since YouTube still isn’t making any money, just loosing it by the bucketful.
#27 – I always wondered how much Google set aside to pay IP lawsuits when they purchased YouTube.
I’m sure that Viacom just wants to data mine your viewing habits on Youtube, and then profit from selling that to marketers. It’s not like Viacom could demand you pay for viewing something that was declared illegal, retroactive to placing it on Youtube. Pulling videos from Youtube should be the end of it for Viacom, and anyone else. But I suspect Viacom now wants to profit by their loss of exclusive media control. So the court is really just defending their ability to make a profit. It Viacom’s commerce “rights” over your privacy rights.
I’m sure Viacom will try selling their list of viewers who watched South Park’s “Trapped in the Closet” video clips to the Scientologists.
#26 Been using it for a while.