As part of the ongoing legal punch-up between Viacom (MTV, Paramount pitcures) and Google (YouTube) over allegations of copyright infringement, a US court has ruled that Google must disclose the usernames, IP addresses and viewing histories of all its users.
This seems a strange move on the face of it; surely all that's needed is a list of the history entries which relate to Viacom's copyright material... not the associated user-name. After all, what Viacom appears to be after is Google's money, rather than royalties from the users themselves.
Both the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) and Simon Davies of the LSE have commented via this BBC article, noting that this has been a privacy disaster waiting to happen for a while now...
"Leading privacy expert Simon Davies told BBC News that the privacy of millions of YouTube users was threatened:
"The chickens have come home to roost for Google.
"Their arrogance and refusal to listen to friendly advice has resulted in the privacy of tens of millions being placed under threat."
Mr Davies said privacy campaigners had warned Google for years that IP addresses were personally identifiable information.
Google pledged last year to anonymise IP addresses for search information but it has said nothing about YouTube data.
Mr Davies said: "Governments and organisations are realising that companies like Google have a warehouse full of data. And while that data is stored it is under threat of being used and putting privacy in danger."
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.
"We urge Viacom to back off this overbroad request and Google to take all steps necessary to challenge this order and protect the rights of its users."
The body said the ruling was also potentially unlawful because the log data did contain personally identifiable data.
The court also ruled that Google disclose to Viacom the details of all videos that have been removed from the site for any reason."
I suppose, from the point of view of the average user, three questions are appropriate:
- Once this disclosure has happened, what adverse effects should users look out for, and what should they do about it?
- Will this actually prompt any users to change their YouTube viewing habits? I would guess not: if the content is posted, people will watch it... believing the whole copyright question to be Someone Else's Problem.
- What's the position of those users who allegedly uploaded the copyright material in question?
![[RSS Newsfeed]](/themes/sotto/images/valid-rss.png)
![[This is a Roller site]](/themes/sotto/images/roller-logo.gif){kind=logo}
Until this issue is resolved I will not be using YouTube at all and I am removing Google from my system as it is obviously a front itself for gathering info on us all. I am considering only using internet cafe's for web access and completely disconecting my home network from the Internet completely. I supose Google or someone will inform on me then to MI5/6 or the FBI and they will put me on some sort of 'terrorist' list, if I'm not already on one.
Orwell was just a few years out!
Posted by Bruce Baker-Johnson on July 05, 2008 at 10:53 PM GMT+00:00 #