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.

Tagged "fuckviacom"

Another company to purposely avoid.

Re:Tagged "fuckviacom"

Google is the cash cow for lawsuits now. I better jump on that wagon too.

Re:Tagged "fuckviacom"

Some of us don't have a chance to do such decisions.

I live in Finland so Viacom doesn't affect here. Still, Google is giving them all the records of my personal video watching too.

Some might say "So what, nothing personal on youtube..." but for some of us there is. A lot of information about my friends, what kind of videos I watch, etc. are stuff that I don't want any third parties to know, really.

I think I don't quite yet need to wait for my mother to ask

Why did you get a "It seems you have been watching slash videos, would you be interested in these magazines..." mail?

but it won't be far away if this kind of stuff gets more common.

Re:Tagged "fuckviacom"

Another company to purposely avoid

How? I don't buy stuff from Viacom, the TV stations do. As I don't watch much TV anyway my participation in a boycott isn't going to help any.

That organized RIAA boycott sure helped. The four foreign-owned record labels ignore it, and all losses it causes are attributed to piracy.

At first I thought "somebody needs to start blowing shit up" but then I realized that no matter what we do, it will be useless at best and probably counterproductive.

Now, I haven't RTFA (yet) but the summary sounds like they're going after people who watch YouTube videos. How in the hell am I supposed to know the copyright owner doesn't want it seen? Not wanting your video seen is as stupid as not wanting your music heard.

Is Hollywood that scared of Ster Wreck?

Re:Tagged "fuckviacom"

OK, I'm back. There's no way to say it nice, so I'll not mince words - the summary is inflamatory garbage. TFA says

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.

It doesn't say why Viacom needs user names; maybe I haven't had enough coffee yet, but TFA is pretty light on details too, and since IANAL reading the ruling [wired.com] won't do me much more good than a lawyer reading uncommented source code.

TFA says the EFF is getting involved [eff.org].

Re:Tagged "fuckviacom"

You'd better tagged it "fuckjudgelouislstanton". Because that bloody asshole violates every viewers privacy worldwide. Of course viacom wants this data, companies are not "nice", and if they think they can get away with it, they will do it. But this judge is a fucking catastrophe for allowing them to rape the viewers privacy.

And of course, it's entirely illegal to demand google to turn over the records of non-US viewers to viacom, due to much harder privacy-laws everywhere else.

Re:Tagged "fuckviacom"

One of my good friends says he loves to eat chicken omlettes, because he is able to eat two generations of a family at once.

How far should discovery go?

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"?

Viacom's reasoning for this information

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.

Re:How far should discovery go?

Just provide it as is the custom in trial : on paper

Then blame Viacom on the sudden disappearance of the Amazonian forest.

Um.. uh... er....

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*

>.>

Anti-competitive ?

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.

What I don't understand...

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?

Re:What I don't understand...

Ah, but they they couldn't suggest videos to you. After all, how would you find more midget porn and pirated My Little Ponies episodes if they didn't suggest content for you?

Re:What I don't understand...

Well...as disturbing as that is (midget porn), you've got a good point about recommendations. I know this is "evil", but why not keep a cookie on the user's computer that contains all that information. The site could call it up when you login. If a person doesn't store it, or deletes their cookies, that data is lost. Oh well, but it would release google having to give out information that could be used against it.

Anonymize

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

I'm going to be rich

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.

Protective Order

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.

Re:Protective Order

Here are some details about the Hon. Louis L Stanton:

http://www1.nysd.uscourts.gov/judge_info.php?id=31 [uscourts.gov]

It provides some ways to contact him (including a phone number) for those who might want to share their displeasure over his ruling.

Why..

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 the judge wants google to violate copyright ...

The order also requires Google to turn over copies of all videos that it has taken down for any reason.

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.

So this is the future of civil lawsuits...

Who needs to win cases when you can receive millions of dollars in data simply by going through discovery proceedings?

All of us

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.

This is breaking european law.

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.

Viaccom Brands to avoid

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