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YouTube Must Give All User Histories To Viacom
psyopper writes "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.
Although Google argued that turning over the data would invade its users' privacy, the judge's ruling (.pdf) described that argument as 'speculative' and ordered Google to turn over the logs on a set of four terabyte hard drives." Update: 07/03 18:05 GMT by T : Brian Aker, now of MySQL but long ago Slashdot's "database thug," writes a journal entry on how companies could intelligently treat such potentially sensitive user data.
Another company to purposely avoid.
hmmm, thats a nasty precedent.
Presumably, legal discovery is usually limited to the domain in which the lawsuit is operating. In a case like this, is it really appropriate for Google to provide such vast quantities of information, 99.9% of which is almost certainly irrelevant to the case? Shouldn't there be an appeals process Google can use that basically says "that judge doesn't know what (s)he's talking about, Viacom don't need this information"?
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
That must've been a hacker who got onto my computer who was searching for "bunny", "kitties", "puppies" and "babies".
I only search for "fire", "car crashes", "backyard wrestling" and "boobs".
*grunt*
>.>
Isn't there some law that, unless you are a convicted monopolist, you can't be expected to help the competition ? I'm sure Viacom will do nothing with this data to help its own advertising business, no sirree.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Why would a company keep all of that information, especially when they know there is a high degree of certainty that they will be involved in some legal troubles later. Keeping this information is just asking for trouble. There probably are a few ways they use it, but it could easily be done without needing to keep a history. View counts, for instance, could just be incremented, and immediately the information about who viewed it could be thrown out. What about all of the related videos? Just create those links and throw out the information about the individuals that clicked between videos? It just doesn't make sense that when you will be offering a service that could come back to bit you in the rear, why would you keep information that could potentially show that you are doing something in a gray-area?
Viacom wants the data to prove that infringing material is more popular than user-created videos, which could be used to increase Google's liability if it is found guilty of contributory infringement.
So anonymize the data. Ask your friendly local CS student for instructions. You can get all your statistics from that.
Oh, that isn't actually the reason you want the data? Yeah, thought so. DIAF
Now that they gave out my private information to another company without my consent i can now sue google and become rich...I pitty the suckers that bought stock in google.
The users need to intervene as a class and request a protective order. They probably can't get the subpoena quashed but they probably can get the judge to limit what Viacom can do with the data and who can see it. They should ask him to limit access to the data to outside experts sworn to secrecy.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Why would Google even keep this info. We seriously need to learn to stop tracking this kind of stuff. It's like the Patriot act and libraries. When the act passed and libraries found out that checkout records of their users could be used in court most libraries simply stopped keeping a record of them. Companies like Google need to start doing the same.
So, if google has taken down a video from some non-viacom entity, for any reason, viacom gets a copy, in violation of the original owners' copyrights?
Also, I wonder if google had to take down any kiddie porn vids ... seems we could get viacom for possessing child porn.
Kevin Smith on Prince
They're arguing that YouTube gets more viewership from copyrighted materials than non-copyrighted stuff, and they want the viewer logs to prove that. Then they'll go after Google and others for more money because they're profiting more from it.
I'm not saying that I agree with decision (I don't), but it's not like it's entirely unmotiviated.
On the other hand, I think people really need to start showing up outside the homes of the various lawyers, judges, and corporate executives involved and protest this kind of bullshit. They need to be followed into public places and shouted at about their behavior.
Who needs to win cases when you can receive millions of dollars in data simply by going through discovery proceedings?
Every single user of the Internet should be OUTRAGED about this judge's neglect of basic privacy statutes. I dispatched an email to YouTube about this order, urging them to fight it with all their power.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Except that due to government manipulation of the economy, congressman have been bought and paid for by companies like Viacom, and will readily pass legislation favoring such companies. Its one huge protection racket favoring the wealthiest and largest organizations.
Why is Google keeping such detailed logs? If Google had anonymised their IP address logs to begin with, they could have avoided this.
They should have taken the white house's lead and preemptively destroyed any computer records they didn't want coming out in court.
This is breaking european law. It is personal data (a log file with IP addresses is). So I really hope that Google do not have that sort of data in the US.
I will be reporting this to the danish data privacy agency. I suggest every other euopean reader here also contacts their local data privacy agency, or some EU institutuion.
Yeah. It's a good thing that Viacomm isn't a multinational organization that, through lobbying and PACs, donates tons of money to politicians...not to mention donations to politicians from its upper management on a private basis, otherwise I'd be worried too!
:(
Oh crap
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Not much Google can do now if ordered by a court to turn it over, but I'm a bit (lot) creeped out by why they think they need to keep this type of detailed personalized history in the first place. Having the history means that a court/government/disgruntled employee/future employer/hacker may get access to it.
If Google really need to target advertising to what we're watching, searching for, etc, etc (big brother - yuck), then couldn't they at least do so in a more anonymous form - rather than storing "user Joe just watched Viacom's boobie-jiggle on YouTube on July 3rd", just do user[joe].interests[interest-class[boobie-jiggle]]++.
I guess Google don't consider being big brother incarnate to be "evil", but I think most of their user base do!
Here's a list. They've got their hands in a lot of different areas, it'll be tough to avoid them entirely.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Here's the list of all the brands you now want to avoid because Viacom is being a bitch.
media networks,bet networks,bet,bet j,mtv networks, atomfilms, addictinggames, cmt, comedy central, gametrailers, harmonix, logo, mtv, mtv2, mtvn international, mtvu, mtv tr3s, neopets, nickelodeon - nick jr., nick at nite, noggin, parentsconnect, quizilla, rhapsody, shockwave, spike tv, the n, tv land, vh1, vh1 classic, vh1 soul, virtual worlds, xfire, filmed entertainment, paramount pictures corp, paramount pictures, dreamworks studios, paramount vantage, mtv films, nickelodeon movies, home entertainment, global reach, brand index
I'll save you the trouble, my IP is 127.0.0.1
Anyone have some boilerplate forms and step by step instructions to file the necessary legal objections to this? I would sure do it and I'll bet enough other people would to keep the court busy just reading the stuff for quite a while.
Still not too hot?
You shouldn't underestimate the damage a large corporation can do with private data. Most of them are bestest friends forever with the government, and of those who aren't, few of them will stand up to the government. I'd say that if Viacom has this info it's as good as in US gov. hands.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Why do companies keep collecting every bit of data they can like this? Why does Google need to know the user name of the person watching the videos? Even the IP address is questionable. If they want to track people artificially inflating their views, wouldn't it be simple to keep one day's worth of views by IP address? What value do they get from keeping all the viewing history?
Meanwhile, Viacom gets user names, IP addresses, and the list of every video watched. If they are smart, they will realize this is way better then any survey or Nelson rating they ever get. And they got it nearly for free. You can be certain that other companies will be very interested in this data too. Can they just give Viacom a call and get it? Did the court put any restraints on Viacom sharing this data?
I hope you haven't watched anything on YouTube you don't want to be contacted about. Now excuse me while I go log out of my account. I don't think I've watched anything I don't want shared, but at the same time I would rather not risk having someone else come through and make decisions about me based on my random viewing habits.
I think GP is wanting to know why Viacom needs to know who watched, when posting the copyrighted content is more unambiguously actionable. FTA:
When the Supreme Court ruled on Grokster, they considered that Grokster knew that the service would be used overwhelmingly for illegal files, and that legal files wouldn't account for enough traffic to make the whole thing worthwhile/profitable. Illegal activity may not have been integral to the technical model of what they were doing, but it was integral to the business model. It looks like they're going to try to make the case that Google knew that copyrighted material was going to be essential to driving enough traffic to the site to make it a credible medium. That would make their participation in the infringement pretty willful.
Finally modding someone offtopic when they rant about what "Begging the Question" means: priceless.
IAAL.
When someone asks for discovery outside any reasonable boundry, attorneys refer to it as a "fishing expedition". Here, they just want to see the user patterns, so that they can do a stat analysis and figure out new ways to handicap a service they don't control.
The overarching reason for all of this litigation is only secondarily about copyright. The primary reason is so that they can learn and when they ask the "series of tubes" know-little (but bought and paid for) congress for son of DMCA they know how to hamstring.
While the Viacoms and Sonys of the world don't like the internet and can't kill it, they can try to hobble it at every turn. This, HDCP, etc are all part of one grand scheme to control the pipeline. "child porn" is the excuse to filter at the ISP......
Think of 1978....they controlled your tv, and that's the way they liked it. That is the ideal.
What would be the purpose of this? If you watch a video on YouTube, even if its not there legally, you are doing nothing illegal. Or at least nothing provably illegal. The person uploading these copyrighted materials is doing something definitely illegal, but couldn't they do figure out who that is already by just crawling the site for their content and making a note of the username, and then pestering Google for the IP address?
Something doesn't make sense here. My guess is they more or less know who is pirating their content, but what they are really interested in is who is pirating their partners'/competitors' content, and they are going to try to sell that info on to their competitors. Just a guess.
Although Google argued that turning over the data would invade its users' privacy, the judge's ruling (.pdf) described that argument as "speculative"
This must be some new use of the word "speculative" with which I am unfamiliar.
Abolish copyright. End the insanity.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I have pretty regularly cleared my viewing history on YouTube. (Go to QuickList->Viewing History->Clear Viewing History on the YouTube interface).
Did YouTube keep a copy of it anyway? Are they turning that over to Viacom?
If so, I'd like to file a bug against the Clear Viewing History feature as it obviously did not clear the viewing history.
Stuart Eichert
The judge making this senile ruling is Louis Stanton, who was born in 1927, 81 years ago. He was appointed by Ronald Reagan, 23 years ago.
Most Americans have to retire when they're 65. This guy is still sitting there, ruling on American activities that were invented only when he was already past retirement age.
Let him rule on whips & buggies. He's obviously unfit to rule on Internet privacy, and has even forgotten the 4th Amendment.
--
make install -not war
>You could post your own flash videos on your own web site.
How will that help when the reported problem is that Google is being ordered to turn over the *viewing* histories of its users?
As I understand it, one of the main points in the GPL is that if you create a derivative work based on GPL'ed code, you are obligated to release the source to your modifications when distributing source/binaries to other folks. This is a different kind of "free" than "I can take this code and do whatever the fuck I want with it".
The mechanism that the GPL uses to enforce this is the copyright owned by the original creator of the work. If copyright were abolished, it would be legally OK if I took the source code to Firefox, created and released a derivative web browser, and refused to release any of the modified source to anyone.
Of course, since this is /., I'm sure you knew this :)
find / -name "*.sig" | xargs rm