Tuesday, 8 July 2008

YouTube’s User Facts Not Private Anymore

Last week, the US district judge ordered Google to share the login names and Internet addresses of its YouTube users with media company Viacom. The injunction comes after the infamous USD 1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit slapped on Google by Viacom, which owns cable networks such as MTV, VH1, and Nickelodeon.

According to the court order, Viacom gets the right to access usernames, IP addresses and videos watched by YouTube users, in order to prove that videos that infringe copyrights are the most watched, and that YouTube is a website that deliberately supports copyright infringement.

Google tried to argue that the request, for about 12 TB of data, was unduly burdensome, but U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton determined that it would be easy to copy. The search engine company also argued that Viacom's request for the information threatened user privacy because it would disclose viewing and video uploading patterns and link them with login IDs and IP addresses.

Viacom has responded saying it has no intention of using personal information to persecute viewers. Rather it only wants to prove that YouTube is promoting viewing of pirated content for profits sake.