[IP] This is BAD news -- Google Ordered to Turn Over YouTube User Data

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

________________________________________
From: Brock N Meeks [bmeeks@cox.net]
Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2008 12:40 PM
To: David Farber
Subject: Google Ordered to Turn Over YouTube User Data

Dave,

Forgive me if I've just missed someone else posting this.   The
following is from EFF regarding a court ruling released late
yesterday.  The mainstream press hasn't jumped on this like I would
image, the first reports came out about a parallel ruling in the case
in that denied a Viacom request for Google to hand over source code.

But here's the real hub of the decision handed down yesterday:
Yesterday, in the Viacom v. Google litigation, the federal court for
the Southern District of New York ordered Google to produce to Viacom
(over Google's objections):


"...all data from the Logging database concerning each time a YouTube
video has been viewed on the YouTube website or through embedding on a
third-party website..."

The court’s order grants Viacom's request and erroneously ignores the
protections of the federal Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), and
threatens to expose deeply private information about what videos are
watched by YouTube users. The VPPA passed after a newspaper disclosed
Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's video rental records. As Congress
recognized, your selection of videos to watch is deeply personal and
deserves the strongest protection.

The 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."

[snip]

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/07/court-ruling-will-expose-viewing-habits-youtube-us





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