A New York court has this week thrown the legal cat amongst the privacy pigeons by ordering video-sharing Web site YouTube to reveal private user data specific to the viewing habits of millions of its visitors.
Privacy fears mount as Viacom granted access to YouTube\'s vast logging database. Image: Rpongsaj/Flickr.
The court order comes as Google-owned YouTube continues in its long-running fight against accusations of copyright infringement lodged against it by media conglomerate Viacom Inc.
New York-based Viacom is seeking $1 billion USD in damages from YouTube -- the world’s third most popular Web destination -- for the illegal posting of Viacom-owned content produced by networks such as MTV, VH1 and Nickelodeon.
Issued on Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton, who described Google’s privacy claims as “speculative,” the court ruling now forces YouTube to provide Viacom with access to its massive 12TB information logging database.
By granting Viacom access to its vast database, which reportedly contains information that equates to some 10 million books, it will enable the media heavyweight to rifle through the login IDs, times of viewing, video clip identifications, and Internet Protocol (IP) addresses related to every one of YouTube’s users.
It is apparently Viacom’s intention to show that illegally posted and copyrighted clips taken from the likes of Comedy Central production “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” are massively more popular than YouTube’s user-created content and are thus providing YouTube and owners Google with significant amounts of ill-gotten revenue.
Privacy advocates are far from pleased with the court’s ruling, claiming that it blatantly ignores the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act, which was passed by Congress in order to prevent the viewing habits of individuals from being accessed through forced disclosure.
In an effort to calm the fears of YouTube’s audience, Viacom has said that it has no intention of bringing individual users to task, regardless of whether they choose to watch or upload copyrighted material.
“We’re not going to use the data to find them. We’re not going to use it to sue them. We’re not going to use it to look at who they are,” offered Viacom counsel Michael Fricklas regarding the ruling, before insisting that Viacom simply wants to use the information to prove the huge popularity discrepancies between copyright protected and non-protected content.
In reaction to the ruling, Google has said it will not issue an appeal. However, the search company has voiced its disappointment in relation to the court’s decision and has also dispatched a letter to Viacom asking that it be allowed to “anonymize the logs” before opening them in order to fully protect user IDs and IP addresses.
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