Comments on: YouTube user data must be turned over to Viacom, judge rules

By: Jack

Jack — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m now a bit unsettled at how many kitten video views will be connected to me.

By: Xeni Jardin

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

They’re having a whale of a time.

By: Secret_Life_of_Plants

Secret_Life_of_Plants — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

What if you are not an American citizen? How does an American judge have the right to tell Google to release my information to an American company?

By: Joe

Joe — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The problem in cases like this is that, while Google and Viacom have lawyers in the room, no one represents the YouTube users.

Secret_Life: it appears that unlike European law, American law doesn’t think it’s your information, they think that it is Google’s information.

Todd Knarr: you might have a good argument, but it’s going to take a good attorney to make it. Perhaps the EFF might be interested in stepping in.

By: Foolster41

Foolster41 — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Secret Life: It goes even further than that. Americans are supposed to be protected by the bill of rights. (this very well counts as a search and seizure.). Though apparently the movie/music industry doesn’t think the bill of rights apply on the internet, or anywhere else for that matter.

By: Evil Jim

Evil Jim — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Interesting. I just heard this on BBC radio news a couple hours ago.

By: Adam Weiss

Adam Weiss — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This is an incredibly frightening precedent.

Somebody (EFF?) should sue AT&T over something ridiculous and subpoena the Daytona database with this Viacom case as precedent.

This is a serious legal hole that needs to be thrust into the spotlight as a problem and appropriately patched for good.

By: collapsibletank

collapsibletank — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Does this include UK users data? US judges surely can’t demand data from other countries…? YouTube would have to sort the data mountain, possibly making it too unreasonable a task to be expected by this Judge.

By: mdhatter

mdhatter — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Now the judge will know all about Xeni’s kitten pron habit. ;)

By: Daemon

Daemon — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

When you think about it, if they are suing Google over copyright, there’s really not much of a reason for why they need the IPs or usernames of people who merely view the videos.

By: Shay Guy

Shay Guy — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Time to bulk-order the floppy discs, then?

By: Kieran O'Neill

Kieran O'Neill — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Once they have the usernames and IPs of people, all they need to do is employ a small army of recent CS/IT and law graduates to sift through the data, and start filing infringement suits on an industrial scale.

Given the kinds of payouts they’ve been awarded in the past, this would even be a profitable enterprise.

With luck, it really would be the final straw, though.

By: Kieran O'Neill

Kieran O'Neill — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Depending on what Viacom does with the data, this could be copyright armageddon (Copygeddon?) – the final battle between rights holders and consumers.

At the very least a whole lot of consumers will suddenly realise they are at war.

It’s a bit sad that the creators are likely to just end up being pushed to the side.

By: Tarnished Coin

Tarnished Coin — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

@Foolster41

Sorry, but this certainly doesn’t come under search and seizure rights, as in no way are Google’s logs your property and you have no expectation of privacy.

A similar scenario is the police going into a shop and saying “can we see your security footage.” It just so happens that Google happens to have infinitely long security tapes, we all know this, in fact Google privacy policy on Youtube states:

“We use both your personally identifiable information and certain non-personally-identifiable information (such as anonymous user usage data, cookies, IP addresses, browser type, clickstream data, etc.) to improve the quality and design of the YouTube Sites and to create new features, promotions, functionality, and services by storing, tracking, analyzing, and processing user preferences and trends, as well as user activity and communications.”

So it’s clear Google does store that data, so as a user you knew what you were getting yourself into.

I certainly don’t agree with the ruling, but arguing that it goes against the bill of rights isn’t helping because it clearly isn’t true, with even a cursory glance.

By: twotonkatrucks

twotonkatrucks — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

more info at EFF. http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/07/court-ruling-will-expose-viewing-habits-youtube-us

By: Tarnished Coin

Tarnished Coin — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Todd Knarr– doesn’t the Video Protection Act page you linked to, specifically subsection (b)(2) subparagraph (c) stating:

A video tape service provider may disclose personally identifiable information concerning any consumerâ€”to a law enforcement agency pursuant to a warrant issued under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, an equivalent State warrant, a grand jury subpoena, or a court order;

cover this exact scenario? They’ve got a court order from the Judge asking for this data.

By: Tarnished Coin

Tarnished Coin — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Great link TwoTonkaTrucks, thanks!

By: Kieran O'Neill

Kieran O'Neill — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

#15: Tarnished Coin, I’m not so sure it’s that clear cut. As #6 points out, in the EU, this data would almost certainly be considered to be the property of the users. In the US, this is not the case.

I’m not quite sure what EU law would say about the security footage scenario, but certainly data gathered on private individuals by a company is considered to remain the property of the individuals, and laws are heading further towards giving individuals more control over it.

By: Tarnished Coin

Tarnished Coin — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Kieran, fully agree- in the EU there is much more respect for personal data, be it living in a companies database or on your computer, but the USA has certainly dragged it heels along gaining similar protections.

I’m not sure where the law stands on an EU citizen visiting youtube.com, an American company with the servers likely located on American soil, I would assume that the data would fall under American rules, as for, say youtube.co.uk, which might very well be a different matter.

By: shMerker

shMerker — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

What bothers me is that the data Viacom is asking for doesn’t seem relevant to the case. Most of the videos on Youtube have no connection with Viacom so why should they get to know anything about them?

Holy crap, I just realized: Viacom is going to have a list of every person who’s ever been rickrolled.

By: Foolster41

Foolster41 — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Tarnished Coin: You have a point. Not my info. but still, Google shouldn’t have to give the information.

I kind of over-reacted because it is information about me after all, and I dislike it being thrown about like this.

By: Purly

Purly — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Why does YouTube store that information in the first place?

By: zuzu

zuzu — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Why does YouTube store that information in the first place?

If only people, I dunno, ran their own webservers from home, hosting regular MPEG-4 videos over HTTP, using hyperlinks. System Preferences -> Sharing -> Web Sharing -> On. Plus a free DynamicDNS account. It even works for MyFace.

By: Linds

Linds — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

If there’s a particular video on youtube that you find so interesting you want to share it with viacom then i recommend firefox + this extension https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/115

By: Marcel

Marcel — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

It would be the ultimate form of irony that Viacom has been offered retro-active immunity for doing something that was clearly illegal at time, while at that same moment, they could consider sueing people for doing something that was clearly legal at the time.

By: Tubman

Tubman — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

@#15 & #17, Tarnished Coin: To quote your quote with a different emphasis,

A video tape service provider may disclose personally identifiable information concerning any consumerâ€”to a law enforcement agency…

There is (or at least there should be) a world of difference between handing something to the police and handing it to representatives of a corporation.

By: slywy

slywy — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

#11 (When you think about it, if they are suing Google over copyright, there’s really not much of a reason for why they need the IPs or usernames of people who merely view the videos.) and #21: That as my first thought exactly.

By: agger

agger — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Maybe Google should not have been obliged to hand over these data, but the ruling points at a more fundamental problem: Google should never have kept all these data in the first place.

I mean: A complete log of all film requests, comments, views, etc. on YouTube EVAH, complete with IP address login name and all? Why do they keep this information if not to invade people’s privacy?

I could understand it if they had been able to give their log information a week back, or so. The log information Viacom has requested ought to have been deleted a long time ago.

By: fALk

fALk — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

so what is the terms of agreement at google for uploading content? Do they put the users in charge of copyright clearance? What about – may I mention it – embeds? Are blog owners embedding copyrighted material from youtube liable? (I have not come to a sufficent legal world wide conclusion to this as of yet and I am still researching since about 1.5 month in regards of embeds and Creative Commons).
This lawsuit open so many can of worms that the internet might spill out worms for the next millenium.

By: Robbo

Robbo — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Tech Crunch sez: Since the judge didn’t specify the method of delivery, Google should deliver it to Viacom on paper – that would be equivalent to the entire Library of Congress.

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

Sweet.