YouTube ordered to hand over user details.

[KONQ RADIO]

YouTube ordered to hand over user details

By Andrew Ramadge, Technology Reporter July 03, 2008 05:15pm



YOUTUBE has been ordered to give up records of each clip watched on the popular video-sharing website, along with the date, time and IP address of each person who watched it, to media giant Viacom.


In a ruling that could have major implications for online privacy around the world, US District Court judge Louis Stanton granted Viacom access to the records as part of its ongoing copyright infringement lawsuit against Google and its subsidiary YouTube.



Each time a video is played, YouTube's "Logging" database records the user ID and IP address of the viewer, the date and time of the request and the ID of the clip – and includes details of videos embedded on websites other than YouTube.



"While the Logging database is large, all of its contents can be copied onto a few 'over-the-shelf' four-terabyte hard drives," Judge Stanton said, in response to Google's claim that providing the data would be too difficult.
"The 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."
Viacom sought access to the database in a bid to prove that clips allegedly infringing copyright, such as scenes from TV shows and movies, were more popular than user-generated videos.



Online rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation said the decision stood at odds with US privacy laws and was a "setback to privacy rights".


"The court’s order grants Viacom's request and erroneously ignores the protections of the federal Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), and threatens to expose deeply private information about what videos are watched by YouTube users," said a statement on the group's website.



"We urge Viacom to back off this overbroad request and Google to take all steps necessary to challenge this order and protect the rights of its users."
Judge Stanton denied Viacom's requests for access to other Google and YouTube properties, such as the search engine's source code – including the algorithms it uses to provide search results.



A spokesperson for Google Australia said the company had strongly fought Viacom's request for the Logging database on the grounds of users' privacy, but Judge Stanton had dismissed its arguments.



"We are disappointed the court granted Viacom's overreaching demand for viewing history," said Google senior litigation counsel Catherine Lacavera.
"We will ask Viacom to respect users' privacy and allow us to anonymise the logs before producing them under the court's order."



Viacom began legal action against YouTube in February 2007, when it issued over 100,000 takedown notices to the website regarding material in breach of copyright.



In March 2007, the media giant instigated a $US1 billion lawsuit against Google and YouTube, alleging that the video-sharing website hosted over 150,000 unauthorised clips that had been viewed more than 1.5 billion times.



Viacom's media empire includes Paramount Pictures, MTV, DreamWorks and Nickelodeon.
Links

Judge Stanton's ruling on Wired (PDF) – http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/files/viacom_yout…
Electronic Frontier Foundation statement – http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/07/court-ruling-…

[Tee]

Sure, Google/Youtube wants to play the victim, but why even log the information? They could have avoided this if they just didn't collect the information in the first place.

[KONQ RADIO]

Very true, Tee; but that data is their product which becomes their value to advertisers.

Third-party Advertisers, Links to Other Sites

YouTube allows other companies, called third-party ad servers or ad networks, to serve advertisements within the YouTube Sites. These third-party ad servers or ad networks use technology to send, directly to your browser, the advertisements and links that appear on the YouTube Sites. They automatically receive your IP address when this happens. They may also use other technologies (such as cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons) to measure the effectiveness of their advertisements and to personalize the advertising content you see.


YouTube does not provide any personally identifiable information to these third-party ad servers or ad networks without your consent or except as part of a specific program or feature for which you will have the ability to opt-in or opt-out. However, please note that if an advertiser asks YouTube to show an advertisement to a certain audience (for example, men ages 18-34) or audience segment (for example, men ages 18-24 who have viewed certain channels of content) and you respond to that advertisement, the advertiser or ad-server may conclude that you fit the description of the audience they are trying to reach. The advertiser may also use information regarding your use of the YouTube Sites, such as the number of times you viewed an ad (but not any personally identifiable information), to determine which ads to deliver to you.


You should consult the respective privacy policies of these third-party ad servers or ad networks (see links below) for more information on their practices and for instructions on how to opt-out of certain practices. YouTube's privacy policy does not apply to, and we cannot control the activities of, such other advertisers or web sites. Any data obtained by third-party ad servers subsequently shared with YouTube is maintained and dealt with by YouTube in accordance with this privacy policy.


Currently, YouTube has relationships with the following third-party ad servers or ad networks:

• DoubleClick
  DoubleClick.com || Privacy

More Information

Google adheres to the US Safe Harbor privacy principles. For more information about the Safe Harbor framework or our registration, see the Department of Commerce's web site.
For questions concerning the product or your account, please check out the Google Help page.
For more information about our privacy practices, go to Google's full privacy policy, or write to us at:
YouTube Privacy
901 Cherry Ave.
San Bruno, CA 94066
USA

[Tee]

I agree that Viacom has no right to the info- they are on a fishing expedition and Google ought not be forced to provide them with their case evidence. but...

Just seems like with anything...if you keep it on file, you pose the risk of someone using it against you or your customers at a later time.

Couldn't they (Google and affiliates) use the IP's on the fly and serve up ads, but then not keep the info in a file? Or keep only demographic info, but not down to the IP level?

It would seem to me, this would have protected them and their customers. I mean Google does not have any mandate to log the information long term, but they do have an obligation to protect their customers/viewership.

They could have then honestly said "Oh, sorry, don't have that kind of information"

Plausible Deny-ability.

[KONQ RADIO]

So far there are 64 comments on the parent site:

Reader's Comments: YouTube ordered to hand over user details | News.com.au

[KONQ RADIO]

The NY Post's take on this:

YOUTUBE HANDS PROFILES TO VIACOM


By BRIAN GARRITY


SUMNER REDSTONEHe's watching you.



Last updated: 7:47 am
July 4, 2008
Posted: 3:42 am
July 4, 2008
If you've ever watched a video on YouTube, Viacom now has access to your personal user data and viewing habits.
Google has been ordered by a New York federal judge to turn over a database of YouTube user logs that includes personal user log-on IDs and related information about which clips users watched, when they watched them and the IP address of the computers used to view them.

The ruling came late Wednesday as part of an ongoing $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit that Sumner Redstone-led Viacom filed against Google and YouTube, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the online search giant.

While Viacom is looking to prove widespread unauthorized viewing of its shows like "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" on YouTube, privacy watchdogs are howling that the move is a massive invasion of privacy.
Kurt Opsahl, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, called the ruling "a setback" to privacy rights that will allow Viacom to see what users are watching on YouTube.

"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," he said in blog posting.

However, a source close to Viacom maintained that under court rules, all of that data will go to the media titan's outside counsel and outside experts, not to the company itself.

"The information we've requested will only be used to support Viacom's claims that Google and YouTube are infringing its intellectual property," this person said. "Viacom is completely committed to working with Google to ensure that users' personally sensitive information is completely protected."

Added a Google spokeswoman, "We are disappointed the court granted Viacom's overreaching demand for viewing history." brian.garrity@nypost.com

YOUTUBE HANDS USER ROFILES TO VIACOM AMID COMPLAINTS - New York Post

[jeezeweeze]

Good lord what next?

So should a different search engine be used other than Google? Or quit going to youtube ? Would it make any difference. I'm not sure what a person is supposed to do....Just another sign of the times when rights are ignored and the constitution means squat.......

[K C Muffin]

I use MSN for my search engine - so how long do you think it will be before their data is compromised in the same fashion. I thought that was supposed to be the beauty of the internet - that you could do most anything, within reason.

[KONQ RADIO]

MSN has a search engine much just like Gooooooogle's.
YouTube allows the posting of content, and some of that content may be the intellectual property of Viacom; who wants to know all they can about the poster and viewers.
Google is the deep pocket that owns YouTube.

[K C Muffin]

Oh, good. There is a difference! It IS a better engine in some cases - I just don't use it much.