YouTube order: Does it threaten your privacy?

Article Launched: 07/04/2008 01:30:32 AM PDT


A federal judge in New York has ordered Google to turn over to Viacom a database linking users of YouTube, the Web's largest video site by far, with every clip they have watched there.

The order raised concerns among users and privacy advocates that the online video viewing habits of tens of millions of people could be exposed. But Viacom and Google, which owns YouTube, said they were hoping to come up with a way to protect the anonymity of YouTube viewers.

Viacom said the information would be safeguarded by a protective order restricting access to the data to outside advisers, who will use it solely to press Viacom's $1 billion copyright suit against Google.

Still, the judge's order, which was made public late Wednesday, renewed concerns among privacy advocates that Internet companies like Google are collecting unprecedented amounts of private information that could be misused or could unexpectedly fall into the hands of third parties.
U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton ordered Google to provide Viacom with records of all the videos watched on YouTube, revealing the users' log-in identities and the Internet addresses for their computers.

'Anonymize the logs'
The data would be released only to the plaintiffs and would not specify users' real names or e-mail addresses. Nonetheless, Google attorney Catherine Lacavera expressed worry over privacy protection.

"We are disappointed the court granted Viacom's overreaching demand for viewing history," she said in a statement Thursday. "We will ask Viacom to respect users' privacy and allow us to anonymize the logs before producing them under the court's order."

Viacom's general counsel, Michael Fricklas, said the request to keep the information anonymous was under consideration.

Viacom is attempting to show the extent of copyright infringement it suffers from YouTube users watching unauthorized online video from its cable television shows, including "South Park," "The Colbert Report" and Nickelodeon cartoons.

Concerned about the intrusion on people's privacy from revealing what they're watching and when, Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, assailed the court order on the foundation's blog.

"The court's erroneous ruling is a setback to privacy rights, and will allow Viacom to see what you are watching on YouTube," Opsahl wrote. "We urge Viacom to back off this over-broad request and Google to take all steps necessary to challenge this order and protect the rights of its users."
Google lawyers asked Viacom in a letter to allow information to be removed from the data that potentially could further identify individuals.

"We request that plaintiffs agree that YouTube may redact usernames and IP addresses from the viewing data in the interests of protecting user privacy," wrote David H. Kramer, a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.
Viacom did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter.
'Critical trade secret'
The judge denied some Viacom requests, including one asking for what the ruling summarized as "a critical trade secret: the computer source code which controls both the YouTube.com search function and Google's Internet search tool 'Google.com.' "

Viacom said it isn't seeking any user's identity. The company said any data provided "will be used exclusively for the purpose of proving our case against YouTube and Google (and) will be handled subject to a court protective order and in a highly confidential manner."

Among other objections, Google argued that Viacom's request "is unduly burdensome" because it would entail 12 terabytes of data. Twelve terabytes is equivalent to the text of roughly 12 million books.

Viacom's lawsuit has been combined with a similar case filed by a British soccer league and other parties. The plaintiffs are trying to prove that YouTube could do more to stop copyright infringement. If their case is successful, it could weaken immunity protections that Internet service providers have when they merely host content submitted by their users. Source for this story

Viacom already knows what content of theirs is being shown on YouTube. Really, why would they honestly need to know who is watching what if they didn't intend to go after the viewers too? I don't see any need for that information to be made available to them at all.