YouTube Must Give All User Histories To Viacom 778
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.
Tagged "fuckviacom" (Score:5, Interesting)
Guh..? (Score:2, Interesting)
Anti-competitive ? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:What I don't understand... (Score:3, Interesting)
Why would they keep it reliably? The google model was based on "stuff breaks, it doesn't hurt our results much and we start over every month"
There was wisdom to that (when it happened)
Re:Anonymize (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Protect our freedom (Score:4, Interesting)
They don't need all that information (Score:1, Interesting)
All they need is a count of views of each video. Something that is already available directly from the site!
Re:Viacom's reasoning for this information (Score:5, Interesting)
File back. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Wow... (Score:2, Interesting)
So.. what happens when we Viacom can't find a judge on this planet who's IP address isn't on the list that has viewed copyrighted material?
Any defense attorney can get the case thrown out of court based on possible bias of any judge that's on that list.
Re:What I don't understand... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Guh..? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
The legal term is "fishing expedition" (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:What I don't understand... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Viacom's reasoning for this information (Score:3, Interesting)
They're arguing that YouTube gets more viewership from copyrighted materials than non-copyrighted stuff, and they want the viewer logs to prove that
FTFA:
The order also requires Google to turn over copies of all videos that it has taken down for any reason.
Viacom also requested YouTube's source code, the code for identifying repeat copyright infringement uploads, copies of all videos marked private, and Google's advertising database schema.
What the fuck does Viacom think? And why is the judge agreeing with them?
Re:Tagged "fuckviacom" (Score:2, Interesting)
Perhaps media companies should engineer a retrovirus which introduces blindness into the collective human genome. That way there's less chance of someone viewing 'illegal content'.
Ho ho ho - I cannot wait until these greedy corporate motherfuckers take it in the ass when the revolution comes (more "ho ho ho"'ing trailing off insanely....)
Re:Tagged "fuckviacom" (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if New York Country Lawyer would file something on my behalf to exclude my data from inclusion. I don't believe that I've watched anything that is Viacom owned (mostly parody and how-to videos), so I wouldn't really care if they found out who I was through that filing (but as a John Doe would be even better). If the scope was limited to only stuff owned by them, that's one thing, but for any YouTube video, screw them.
Layne
Re:Viacom's reasoning for this information (Score:5, Interesting)
.
In other words, an ignorant judge just handed them a cache of data worth way more than anything they could have gotten from an actual win (and has compromised the personal data of millions of completely innocent people to Viacom's market research department in the process)
Re:Tagged "fuckviacom" (Score:5, Interesting)
Google could run a simple select * or equivalent, changing each name to a guid of some kind. This would allow analysis of all users, per user, if necessary (which is doubtful anyway), without revealing any identifying info.
Worse, this also reveals a trade secret -- Google can (and probably is) datamining to find what users actually choose to watch, which I'm sure Viacom wants to get their hands on.
Think about what that data would be worth for creating new programs. This has stupidity and scam written all over it.
Google waited too long, it seems... (Score:3, Interesting)
Google's Blog [blogspot.com] claims that they started taking steps to anonymize their logs a year ago, keeping "only" 18 months worth of identifiable data, to be implemented "within a year's time".
It seems likely that this wouldn't have been soon enough for any of this material to have been anonymized before Viacom's suit, since it was filed the same month they made this announcement.
Re:Tagged "fuckviacom" (Score:4, Interesting)
"Defendantsâ(TM) âoeLoggingâ database contains, for each instance a video is watched, the unique âoelogin IDâ of the user who watched it, the time when the user started to watch the video, the internet protocol address other devices connected to the internet use to identify the userâ(TM)s computer (âoeIP addressâ), and the identifier for the video... (T)he motion to compel production of all data from the Logging database concerning each time a YouTube video has been viewed on the YouTube website or through embedding on a third-party website is granted."
They don't get the whole video database (Section 5), they DO get Google Video database schema to check for methods employed to detect infringing videos, and they get non-content related info about other videos for purposes of comparisson with detection rates of infringing videos.
Again, IANAL. It's just what I read.
Rickrolling alone (Score:3, Interesting)
... could put "infringing" content over the top.
Re:Tagged "fuckviacom" (Score:1, Interesting)
This is bullshit!!! Why does our privacy have to be invaded in order to know how many have viewed a copyrighted video? All they needed were the usernames/passwords of those who viewed that specific video. I say again Fuck Viacom!!!
Re:What I don't understand... (Score:3, Interesting)
Mod parent up. This isn't potentially valuable. This is worth more than all the possible money they could have lost in ad revenue from the 'infringing' Viacom episodes. In my view, the real prize is this data. It tells them what movies to make and its easily searchable. I think the suit is just a cover to get this valuable data!
Re:Tagged "fuckviacom" (Score:1, Interesting)
But I also know that google earns a lot of money from keeping that private. They would instantly lose their position as a primary search engine if they started giving everyone's personal history to third party advertisers. Even more so with email.
Google has a lot of data on me but their interests are in keeping it to themselves and I know exactly what data they have and have given it all to them.
Verizon is a company I have never dealt with at all, only read about it on slashdot, they might well have interests in abusing that data and to which I have never given any info about myself. Thus, they shouldn't have it but have a lot of it.
Do you really not see any difference?
Re:Tagged "fuckviacom" (Score:5, Interesting)
I read through that PDF and the impression I got was that Viacom is on a major full blown witch hunt for EVERYONE that has watched an 'illegal' video, and even wants to go after advertisers advertising while the said video is playing - and calls each one of them (us?) defendants, I can only assume that if your calling someone a defendant (that isn't one) that your planning to be the plantif against them someday...
They even go as far as saying that if the user comments say it's infringing and you watch it, you "KNEW" it was illegal and likewise they deserve the right to the information about you.
Re:Protective Order (Score:5, Interesting)
I called the chambers and left a message with the woman who answered the phone. She seemed genuinely annoyed today so perhaps she is taking several messages about the issue. Although I could be wrong.
What if you have "cleared" your viewing history? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Tagged "fuckviacom" (Score:5, Interesting)
Better yet, I should request that Viacom give me recorded history of everyone that works for them and all the footage they've ever produced to ensure that they haven't violated any of my copyrights.
Re:Tagged "fuckviacom" (Score:4, Interesting)
That is a very, very good point. Before turning over the data, Google should open up a mechanism for every individual user who so chooses to file an appeal to the dissemination of their personal data.
Whatever Viacom needs to do, they can do sitting at a secure workstation under Google's control, with a network security officer standing over their shoulder at all times, and with logs of every query they run. Whatever data is relevant to their lawsuit they can print out in aggregate form.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:We could solve this problem. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Google waited too long, it seems... (Score:3, Interesting)
Google's Blog [blogspot.com] claims that they started taking steps to anonymize their logs a year ago, keeping "only" 18 months worth of identifiable data, to be implemented "within a year's time".
It seems likely that this wouldn't have been soon enough for any of this material to have been anonymized before Viacom's suit, since it was filed the same month they made this announcement.
Not only that, but it might be illegal to do so. As I understand it, once something is relevant to legal proceedings it is illegal to destroy "evidence." Not sure as IANAL, if that is only true in criminal, not civil cases.
We once raced to a state border to avoid being served with lawsuit papers so we could destroy all our working papers and then allowed ourselves to be served once that was done.
Re:Tagged "fuckviacom" (Score:4, Interesting)
These social networking sites are just libraries of personal info about you that anyone can see.
Maybe that's the point?
Some years back I was involved in a civil suit involving my two dogs. I got a call from the producers of the Judge Judy show asking me whether I was interested in having the case handled in front of television cameras, the carrot part of the offer being that if I lost, they would pay for any and all costs.
At first I was, quite honestly, flattered. Hollywood producers calling me at home? Who wouldn't be, right? I thought about it for a few minutes and it seemed that that it could be a funny episode, given that my dogs were funny enough, and the nature of the case itself deserved a laugh track. Why not turn an annoying legal predicament into entertainment?
But then I thought of all the willing and eager contestants I'd seen on the Jerry Springer show over the years. I decided that trading my dignity and privacy for 15 minutes of fame and a few dollars by appearing on television show was A Really Stupid Idea, and told the woman at the other end of the phone, "No."
It would be a stretch to say that social networking sites fall into a similar category as the Jerry Springer show (not too many hillbillies on Facebook yet), but the desire to tell all, share all, and most importantly, be seen, is undeniably widespread in our modern culture. I guess the theory is that if enough people are doing it, it doesn't really matter. And if there are consequences (intended, or otherwise), then the notoriety and fame more than makes up for everything.
Re:Tagged "fuckviacom" (Score:1, Interesting)
If there are any legal-eagles on here, what historic decisions prevent a judge from a class-action suit by all the users who's rights he has just given away? Then, how much does the average company charge for "privacy services"? Multiply that amount by the number of users on YouTube (after all, they have that information right there on 4TB of disks), and sue the living shit out of Viacom. Everyone gets $20, and a free autograph of Steven Colbert. If Viacom wants my personal information, bitch gotta pay. ...or they could avoid this whole mess, and set up a deal with YouTube where Viacom ads appear on any Viacom-related content, and split the ad revenue. How do you filter out Viacom-related content, you ask? Hire some kid to surf YouTube all day, looking for "Daily Show" clips. Kid gets a job, Viacom gets credit and targeted ads, YouTube gets ad revenue, and I get my clip.
Everybody wins.
Re:We could solve this problem. (Score:5, Interesting)
In 2007 Viacom, claiming copyright infringment, requested the removal of a Youtube video that contained a part of their show, Web Junk 2.0, which featured a video from Youtube that Viacom allegedly used without permission. Christopher Knight, the creator of the video, wrote in a blog post: "So Viacom took a video that I had made for non-profit purposes and without trying to acquire my permission, used it in a for-profit broadcast. And then when I made a YouTube clip of what they did with my material, they charged me with copyright infringement and had YouTube pull the clip. Folks, this is, as we say down here in the South, 'bass-ackwards.'"[5] Knight subsequently filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act counter-notification claim with YouTube. Two weeks later Viacom yielded to Knight and the disputed clip was restored.
Re:The Judge is 81 Years Old (Score:3, Interesting)
Ageist bigotry does not help your cause.
And remember, you'll either get old or die young! Which would you rather do?!
Re:We could solve this problem. (Score:1, Interesting)
So anyone know how secure this personal data will be after giving it to Viacom (presumably without Google's privacy policy being legally binding on them as they receive it?)
Re:We could solve this problem. (Score:3, Interesting)
Yahoo! is nice in that it provides the user with some control over where their personal data is stored. I first opened my Yahoo! account in Australia, and when I moved back to Europe, I was asked whether I wanted my data migrated to European servers to improve speed (or reduce their costs, a cynic would say). They also made it clear what the privacy implications would be.