Judge Orders YouTube to Give All User Histories to Viacom

[Kaydon]

Google will have to turn over every record of every video watched by YouTube users, including users' names and IP addresses, to Viacom, which is suing Google for allowing clips of its copyright videos to appear on YouTube, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Read more (http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/07/judge-orders-yo.html)

This is stupid. All you have to do is tell Google, and they'll take them down in a timely manner. Why the need for courts?

Update, sort of.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/03/department-of-civil-disobedience-google-should-deliver-its-youtube-data-to-viacom-in-paper-form/

That would be funny

[Bugger]

That is not going to be of much use to Viacom, even if they could establish copyrights, because "smart" video downloaders would log onto YouTube through a foreign anonymous or elite/high-anonymity proxy-server that allows downloads, especially one located in a country that does not enforce foreign copyrights, e.g. Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Vietnam, Iran, and the like. See http://www.samair.ru/proxy/ for regularly updated lists of the IP addresses and port numbers and countries of proxy-servers.

[akinrog]

TSee http://www.samair.ru/proxy/ for regularly updated lists of the IP addresses and port numbers and countries of proxy-servers.

Or use tor and privoxy for surfing for questionable content. :D Regards.

[Intrinsic]

I was under the impression that Viacom wanted the info, not necessarily to prosecute uploaders (although I am sure that would happen), but to aid in their lawsuit against Google, showing that Google (and YouTube) isn't being proactive enough in taking down copyright material.

In reading a different article, I saw that Google was considering complying while stripping the user names and ip addresses. In my mind that would be a fair compromise, I could care less if they turn over the copyright info, but know that another company has my viewing data is certainly concerning.

The threat of this lawsuit has definitely changed my viewing habits: I make sure that I log out of YouTube before watching a video now.

[Hinckleyforpresident]

It would greatly surprise me if youtube in any way resisted the requests of viacom. Youtube is notorious for taking preemptive action against its members by sending IP's to law enforcement at the slightest hint of illegal activity.

Up until very recently, students at a local university had this problem every year after the world series. People would riot, and other people would tape it and post it on youtube. A week later a whole bunch of people would suddenly get expelled and arrested.

Kind of ironic considering googles slogan: "Don't be evil".

[Intrinsic]

It seems they are at least now attempting to preserve some anonymity:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/biztech/07/15/youtube.privacy.ap/index.html?iref=newssearch

But lawyers for Viacom and the other plaintiffs signed an agreement with YouTube on Monday saying they would accept measures to help YouTube preserve the anonymity of the records. Under the agreement, YouTube can swap the user logins and IP addresses with other, presumably anonymous signifiers; YouTube has a week to propose its method.

It isn't absolute, as entirely dropping the user data would be, but it is a step in the right direction. They aren't completely anonymizing the data (as I think they should), but substituting random data for the ip addresses and user names. In effect it may still be possible to identify some users by their viewing habits (such as multiple views of their own videos). It also leaves open the possibility that in the future they may be ordered to hand over that info too.

[Jacks Complete]

Hey, at least they aren't just rolling over, nor being rolled.

[megalomania]

Even a little bit of randomization of user access logs would, legally speaking, be cause for reasonable doubt in a court case. If IP addresses are the primary evidence the lawyers use, and they can't be relied on, they will have to find some better way of catching their fish.