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Judge orders Google to give YouTube user data to Viacom

A lot of PBHers frequent YouTube. After reading the following, you may want to be more careful as to what you view and download on the website.

7/3/08
SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) — Google expressed disappointment Thursday at a judge's order to give entertainment giant Viacom details of video-watching habits of visitors to its popular video-sharing website YouTube.

On Tuesday US District Court Judge Louis Stanton backed Viacom's request for data on which YouTube users watch which videos on the website.

Viacom is seeking the data as potential evidence for a billion-dollar copyright suit against YouTube and Google, which Viacom charges intentionally avoid preventing Internet users from putting clips of Viacom's copyrighted television programs on YouTube.

"We are disappointed the court granted Viacom's overreaching demand for viewing history," Google senior litigation counsel Catherine Lacavera told AFP in an email Thursday.

But in what Google claims as a partial victory, Stanton this week denied Viacom's request to get its hands on secret source code used in YouTube video searches as well as for Internet searches.

Stanton also refused a Viacom request to order Google to provide access to the videos YouTube users store in private YouTube files.

Google lawyers opposed each of the Viacom requests, which were made during a "discovery" evidence-gathering phase of a lawsuit filed in March of last year in US District Court in New York state.

"We are pleased the court put some limits on discovery, including refusing to allow Viacom to access users' private videos and our search technology," Lacavera said.

"We will ask Viacom to respect users' privacy and allow us to anonymize the logs before producing them under the court's order."

Google has condemned the lawsuit as an attack on the underpinnings of the Internet, while Viacom argues that the California-based Internet search colossus and especially its subsidiary YouTube are involved in "massive" copyright infringement.

The Viacom lawsuit has been merged with a similar civil litigation being pursued by the Premier League of England's Football Association, which says soccer game clips are routinely posted on YouTube without authorization.

Google shielded itself with 1998's Digital Millennium Copyright Act, US legislation that says Internet firms are not responsible for what Internet users put on websites.

Stanton brushed aside privacy concerns on Tuesday while ordering Google to give Viacom log-in names of YouTube users and Internet protocol (IP) numbers identifying which computers they used for viewing videos.

Stanton contends that Viacom needs more than pseudonyms and IP numbers that are tantamount to addresses on the Internet to identify individual YouTube users.

The judge ordered Google to give Viacom copies of the millions of videos that have been deleted from YouTube.

Industry insiders suspect Viacom is using the lawsuit as a negotiating tactic and has no intention of taking the matter to trial.

Viacom's goal could be to reach into Google's deep pockets for royalties for videos played on YouTube.

Viacom, however, said it had no choice but to sue after "a great deal of unproductive negotiation" failed to curtail YouTube's "unlawful business model."

The Viacom stable includes Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and more than 130 other television networks around the world, plus an array of websites.

By houstongal on Jul 3, 2008, 16:41 in Off Topic.

houstongal says on Jul 3, 2008, 16:42:

The above came from www.marketplace.org

"It is now official: there's no place on earth where you will not find a Peruvian band." David Sedaris

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bamacellist says on Jul 3, 2008, 17:47:

Without having looked any further into it... Obviously they said something to the judge that made sense to him, but it's very difficult to understand how examining individual user patterns would be used in support of the contention that YouTube is structured in such a way as to be declared willfully and deliberately encouraging violation of copyright. I wonder if they're more interested in the referrer logs so they can look into attacking sites that allow or encourage users to embed YouTube supplied content. If YouTube can be found liable, then so might be all those other sites, including PHB. Just a thought.

"The future is much like the present, only longer."

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Peter (Moderator) says on Jul 4, 2008, 02:10:

There's a suggestion on Techcrunch now that, in order to comply, they print out all the data on paper and send it to Viacom in that form. Ridiculous, incredible that a judge can get things so wrong.

Poor but snappy

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Peter (Moderator) says on Jul 4, 2008, 02:10:

As for PBH, I'd rather accidentally destroy it than hand over all data to some evilcorp.

Poor but snappy

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Lcacique says on Jul 4, 2008, 13:50:

Shit...guess i am busted. I posted some Carlos Vives footage....

Hoy se nota en la floresta un ambiente de alegría. ¡Y el rumor de ranchería es mas dulce y sabe a fiesta!

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bamacellist says on Jul 4, 2008, 14:46:

Wow! Better hide!!!

Maybe Google will get tired of this and buy Viacom and fire all the lawyers... and maybe this is just sour grapes since Viacom was looking to buy YouTube a couple years ago.

"The future is much like the present, only longer."

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