YouTube Hands Over User Info To Fox

An anonymous reader writes "Tech Crunch has an article about YouTube identifying and handing over a user's information after a request from Fox. 'Three weeks after receiving a subpoena from the U.S. District Court in Northern California, YouTube has reportedly identified a user accused by 20th Century Fox Television of uploading episodes of the show 24 a week prior to their running on television. That user, named ECOTtotal, is also alleged to have uploaded 12 episodes of The Simpsons, some quite old. Apparently Google and YouTube were willing and able to identify the owner of the username ECOTtotal, according to a report on InternetNews.com.'"

Comments

Re:Willing and able

[paranode]

Not only would they, they pretty much have to if they don't want law enforcement just coming in and confiscating all of their hardware.

Re:It was only a matter of time

[roger6106]

A previous post

The full DVD of the first four episodes was ALL OVER Usenet on the 7th.

Thousands of people DLed that, and one guy encoded it for submission to YouTube.

No insider job here.

Re:This really is theft

[SydShamino]

No, in this case you are wrong. Until the information has been made public, it could be claimed (and a jury would likely agree) that the material is a Fox trade secret. It contains plot twists and other elements that are confidential until their air date, so that their impact has not been diluted by pre-emptive copies. Imagine if a writer for a soap opera saw a plot twist on a pre-release version of 24, then wrote that same twist into his or her soap to air before the 24 air date.

Federal law does prohibit stealing of trade secrets, and it is classified as "theft". See for example the recent conviction of a Coca-Cola ex-secretary, who attempted to sell formula information to Pepsi-Cola. Copying the data and providing it to Pepsi did not cause Coke to lose possession of their formula, but it did potentially deprive them of a trade secret.

Before you respond, please read through and understand Title 18, United States Code, Section 1832(a)(1-3).

Re:Willing and able

[OnlineAlias]

And I disagree with that. RIAA went after people who were sharing files, for which there can be legitimate and not necessarily infringing use, using questionable legal tactics. Fox is going after someone in the inside who most definitely didn't have the right to distribute and who is causing serious damage, using perfectly legitimate legal means.

I hate the **AA's as much as the next guy, but on this one, fine with me, I hope they get the guy....

Re:Falsely Believing You are Anonymous...

[MrWa]

Your summary of the stories seems to imply that the anonymous posting caused the mistrial, which is not quite accurate. The discovery of a new witness for the prosecution during the trial itself was the reason for the mistrial - the anonymous posting was just the means by which this witness was discovered. It would make as much sense as blaming coffee shops for the mistrial if the witness was found drinking a latte that morning.

Mistrials in cases where a new witness surfaces late in the trial process are not unusual, District Judge Robert Fairchild said, especially when the testimony presented would affect the case considerably.

A mistrial is simply a do over, to allow the defense to prepare based on the new material available to the prosecution. This prevents the highly dramatic, yet complete fantasy, occurrence of the prosecution discovering a key witness or piece of evidence and unveiling it during the final moments of the trial, catching the defense totally off-guard, leading to a swift conviction.

Re:OT

[paulthomas]

Another comment addresses why this is even being discussed. You're right that 127.0.0.1 is localhost. You're wrong about it being called the "http callback interface." Its the "loopback interface" and has little to do with http, other than the fact that you can reach locally run http services over it.