Google-YouTube-Viacom decision

Posted
on July 4, 2008

The ongoing Google/YouTube-Viacom litigation has now officially spilled over to users with a court order requiring Google to turn over massive amounts of user data to Viacom.

That data includes every YouTube username, the associated IP address and the videos that user has watched on YouTube. Google will also be required to hand over copies of every video removed from Youtube for any reason. Stanton dismissed Google’s argument that the order will violate user privacy, saying such privacy concerns are merely “speculative.”

Meanwhile, the judge denied Viacom’s request that Google turn over YouTube’s source code.

It seems that far more data is in danger of being transferred than is required to satisfy Viacom’s core stated concern, which is to understand the popularity of copyright infringing vs. non-infringing material. Viacom has asked for much more than that, opening up the possibility of their taking legal action to sue individual users (or at least use the threat of a lawsuit) who have watched ‘copyrighted’ material on YouTube.

 

Google, Internet, News
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