Judge Orders YouTube to Give All User Histories to Viacom

Found on Wired on Wednesday, 02 July 2008
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Google will have to turn over every record of every video watched by YouTube users, including users' names and IP addresses, to Viacom, which is suing Google for allowing clips of its copyright videos to appear on YouTube, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Viacom filed suit against Google in March 2007, seeking more than $1 billion in damages for allowing users to upload clips of Viacom's copyright material. Google argues that the law provides a safe harbor for online services so long as they comply with copyright takedown requests.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has already reacted, calling the order a violation of the Video Privacy Protection act that "threatens to expose deeply private information."

Viacom also requested YouTube's source code, the code for identifying repeat copyright infringement uploads, copies of all videos marked private, and Google's advertising database schema.

Those requests were denied in whole, except that Google will have to turn over data about how often each private video has been watched and by how many persons.

Google is turning into a cash cow. If you fail at your business, come up with a reason and sue them for billions. Google also shot itself in the foot there with its greed for user data; keeping all the information it can get turns out to be really bad (it already was bad without that lawsuit). Also, the judge went way over the limits there; since when is watching a copyrighted video online illegal? That's the only reason why Viacom could need the IP addresses of the users. Your beloved entertainment industry turns into a lawsuit industry; seems to pay way more.