US Court Declares You Have No Privacy On YouTube

janeth · #1 (**permalink**) 07-03-2008, 11:07 AM

Yesterday's ruling is that Viacom should be provided with data about EVERYONE who has used YouTube, including what they watched.

Viacom itself should do what the court did not and limit the data it takes.

The above was taken from this article.

WTF! US Court Declares You Have No Privacy On YouTube

Guess big brother is watching.

janeth · #2 (**permalink**) 07-03-2008, 11:13 AM

Here is what they are giving them.

Quote:

Defendants’ “Logging” database contains, for each instance a video is watched, the unique “login ID” 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 user’s computer (“IP address”), and the identifier for the video. That database (which is stored on live computer hard drives) is the only existing record of how often each video has been viewed during various time periods.

Seems like a bit of an over kill to me.

**cw1865** · #3 (**permalink**) 07-03-2008, 11:49 AM

You have to read between the lines on this one. Viacom is trying to enforce intellectual copyright/trademark rights. Its one thing to prove that an infringement has taken place, its another to prove damages. How would Viacom do that? Somehow it has to correlate youTube views with lost revenue...the more views, the more likely Viacom lost revenue (Viacom's position). Now, it has placed a burden on the defendant (youTube) to produce voluminous records....how many legal hours / company hours are going to be spent collecting this data? - I suspect a settlement will be forthcoming.

janeth · #4 (**permalink**) 07-03-2008, 11:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cw1865

You have to read between the lines on this one. Viacom is trying to enforce intellectual copyright/trademark rights. Its one thing to prove that an infringement has taken place, its another to prove damages. How would Viacom do that? Somehow it has to correlate youTube views with lost revenue...the more views, the more likely Viacom lost revenue (Viacom's position). Now, it has placed a burden on the defendant (youTube) to produce voluminous records....how many legal hours / company hours are going to be spent collecting this data? - I suspect a settlement will be forthcoming.

The problem is that the courts were willing to give my private information over to someone without a second thought.

And I've got nothing to do with the suit.

**cw1865** · #5 (**permalink**) 07-03-2008, 12:26 PM

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/fil...om_youtube.PDF

go to page 13 and 14 of the .pdf

They still cannot specifically identify you. They're seeking to link activity to infringing videos....

**cw1865** · #6 (**permalink**) 07-15-2008, 08:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by janeth

The problem is that the courts were willing to give my private information over to someone without a second thought.

And I've got nothing to do with the suit.

YouTube, Viacom agree to mask viewer data - Yahoo! News

Look like they got your e-mail, Janeth!

janeth · #7 (**permalink**) 07-15-2008, 11:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cw1865

YouTube, Viacom agree to mask viewer data - Yahoo! News

Look like they got your e-mail, Janeth!

Not mine but it does look like they got someone elses. It is good to know that there are people out there willing to fight for our rights.

WebHostAdvisor · #8 (**permalink**) 07-18-2008, 02:21 PM

Does anyone actually think there is such a thing as web privacy??

Easywebdev · #9 (**permalink**) 07-20-2008, 02:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by janeth

The problem is that the courts were willing to give my private information over to someone without a second thought.

In order for you to have a problem with that it would really have to be "private" information. Did you give your home address/phone number when signing up with youtube? did you in fact sign up with youtube at all?

An ip address is (and ought to be) be traceable to an isp. The isp would then have to divulge what user on their network had that ip assigned at the time it was used to view a file. If that information has to be divulged for legal purposes, then it is hardly "private" information.

I don't agree with youtube tracking the data that they do (from a programmers perspective it is overkill and a waste of database resources), of what use that can be to any organization only time will tell? but the fact that they do track it tells me that they have taken legal counsel (which we do not have to pay for so take it as free legal advice) and it is in their best interest to have such data available should a problem arise.

Orwellian big brother? hardly.
Disconcerting? a little.
A worry? not in the grand scheme of things.
As Gordon Strachan once said, I have a yoghurt in the fridge going out of date, I'll worry about that first.

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