Thu Jul 3, 2008 1:27PM EDT
See Comments (107)
Viacom's war against YouTube over the illegal reposting of video content it owns has finally won it a huge victory in the court of law. Last night a judge ruled that YouTube (and owner Google) is required to turn over a mountain of information to Viacom, including every user's IP address and user name and a list of every video that user has ever watched on the service. (Yes, that's a lot of data.) Google is also required to give Viacom a copy of every video it has ever taken down from the YouTube service, regardless of the reason.
The usual user advocates are naturally calling this a catastrophic failure of the courts to recognize users' right to privacy, but the courts have relied on Google's own defense of its data retention tactics (which holds that an IP address alone won't reveal personal information about a user) as a justification for the verdict. That's one thing, but by demanding user names along with IP addresses, that argument goes out the window. Many are already speculating that Viacom will sue the users who watched the videos as a next step. Heck, it's so popular with the RIAA, why not try it here?
Will Google comply with the order? Good question. It's already being speculated that if it does users will file a massive class action suit against Google in retaliation, and they'd be right to do so. Certainly the release of AOL user search history debacle isn't so far behind us that we've forgotten those lessons already (though in fairness, AOL's data release was its own doing, not a legal judgment).
This issue will likely not stop here as the combatants continue to fight it out in court, but in the meantime, the sobering reality is that it's time to rethink what you're watching on YouTube (or any other video sharing service, for that matter), as it's all too likely that's about to become a matter of public record.
Join in the discussion. Here you'll see the comments in the order they were posted.
I agree that if the information 'is' released, we're talking a class-action of record-setting proportions. The information Viacom is requesting is 'far' in excess of what's required ... and 'should not' be handed over. Personally, I'd say the judge, for making such a ruling, shows he has no comprehension of the online world (which makes sense, considering he graduated law school in 1955) ... why do they insist on giveing tech-themed/heavy cases to judges who know nothing about tech?
It certainly seems like all of our rights to privacy are slowly being taken away. This is an outrage!
Too bad we can't sue the courts for their stupid decision making.
If the data belonged to someone or an entity and was posted without permission of course someone should be sued. Yet I fail to see why it should be the viewer. I think it should be the individual poster or posters of such a content hence only their information should be requested. They have the need to prove that they had the approval to publish the said data.
This is a product that must be experienced to be understood, I didn't even realize I had peeves abou ...
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1 Posted by hookemhorns5468 on Thu Jul 3, 2008 2:37PM EDT Report Abuse
that's horrible. no one has any right to that data