Court order on YouTube user data fans privacy fears

[BIGUN 1,406]

Court order on YouTube user data fans privacy fears

I'm not sure if something is getting lost in the legal to journalism translation, but I'm having trouble interpreting this article.

In the first part of the article it states, "Judge Louis Stanton of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ordered Google on Tuesday to turn over as evidence a database with usernames of YouTube viewers, what videos they watched when, and users' computer addresses."

"Viacom has not asked for and will not be obtaining any personally identifiable information of any user," Viacom said.

2nd page, "But the Google attorney called on Viacom to allow YouTube to anonymize user data -- in other words, redact rows of data containing usernames or unique computer Internet addresses."

My question is; Are they going to allow it, not, or is it part of the negotiation process? Any legal types want to interpret this?


EDIT: Mods... feel free to move if SC is more fitting. I wasn't sure if it was general info for everyone or should pertain to SC forum. My reason for posting it in BF was to a broader audience since we all tend to post hyperlinks to YouTube and wondered if there might be some effect/extension to dz.com or its users (or any website/forum) that this case may have on forum users in the future.

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[woady 0]

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[akarunway 1]

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Court order on YouTube user data fans privacy fears

I'm not sure if something is getting lost in the legal to journalism translation, but I'm having trouble interpreting this article.

In the first part of the article it states, "Judge Louis Stanton of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ordered Google on Tuesday to turn over as evidence a database with usernames of YouTube viewers, what videos they watched when, and users' computer addresses."

"Viacom has not asked for and will not be obtaining any personally identifiable information of any user," Viacom said.

2nd page, "But the Google attorney called on Viacom to allow YouTube to anonymize user data -- in other words, redact rows of data containing usernames or unique computer Internet addresses."

My question is; Are they going to allow it, not, or is it part of the negotiation process? Any legal types want to interpret this?

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My question is; Are they going to allow it, not, or is it part of the negotiation process? Any legal types want to interpret this?

It looks to me that, for the moment, Viacom is in the driver's seat: they have been "requested" by Google to "anonymize" unsernames and unique IP addresses; but unless the trial judge refines his (very broad!) order, it's entirely Viacom's choice.

BTW, don't hold out hope that this Order might be appealed to the Court of Appeals, as pre-trial discovery-of-evidence orders by trial judges (which this is) are only very rarely allowed to be appealed.

For those of you who think this means that you never really have privacy of your IP address or username when you visit virtually any website from your home or work station, you're probably right.

[jcd11235 0]

Google has been good in the past with respect to not handing over personal data of its users to the US government.

As I understand the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (I'm not a lawyer), downloading copyright protected material is not illegal, provided there is no intent to use the material in trade and don't defeat any encryption to access the material. [I]Uploading copyrighted material, on the other hand, is illegal, since the copyright holder, and their agents, has exclusive distribution rights.

For those who might be wondering, downloading via bittorrent typically involves uploading data as well as downloading without the user explicitly starting an upload, so if the the data is copyrighted, the exclusive distribution rights of the copyright holder are being violated.

There shouldn't be any need to identify the users who (only) downloaded YouTube videos that infringed copyrights.

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[BIGUN 1,406]

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There shouldn't be any need to identify the users who (only) downloaded YouTube videos that infringed copyrights.

OK. that's what I was wondering and of course, I'll add the caveat... for now.

Nobody has time to listen; because they're desperately chasing the need of being heard.

[DontPanic 0]

Even if Viacom and Google agree on submitting anonymized data, you still have the bigger issue that the court has set a precident for the original broader order.

[BIGUN 1,406]

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July 04, 2008 | Posted by: The YouTube Team | Permalink

The Law and Your Privacy

As you may have seen in the news, YouTube received a court order to produce viewing data from our database, including usernames and IP addresses. In order to protect our community's privacy, we strongly opposed this motion when Viacom and others filed it.

The court felt differently and ordered us to produce the data. Viacom said that they need general viewing information to determine the proportion of views on YouTube of copyright infringing content vs. non-infringing content.

Of course, we have to follow legal process. But since IP addresses and usernames aren't necessary to determine general viewing practices, our lawyers have asked their lawyers to let us remove that information before we hand over the data they're seeking. (You should know, IP addresses identify a computer, not the person using it. It's not possible to determine your identity solely based on your IP address. Rather, an IP address can reveal what geographic area you're connecting from, or which Internet service provider you're using.)

Why do we keep this information in the first place? It helps us personalize the YouTube experience, getting you closer to the videos you most want to watch. We have many features on the site that help users discover and share compelling content, and we're improving the video experience through recommendations, related videos, and personalized directories that help you find meaningful videos.

We'll continue to fight for your right to share and broadcast your work. The court did impose some encouraging limits -- they agreed with us that Viacom should not have access to private videos or our search technology. Also, the information we provide will be designated highly confidential under court order and only Viacom's outside counsel and experts will have access to it.

Legal matters aside, our focus remains on providing you with the best possible YouTube experience and we continue to be committed to protecting your privacy. Every day, millions of creative people from around the world are posting new, original content. You, our community, are creating the YouTube experience now and tomorrow.

Sincerely,
The YouTube Team

SOURCE: http://www.youtube.com/blog

Nobody has time to listen; because they're desperately chasing the need of being heard.

[BIGUN 1,406]

All,

You'll forgive me, but I seem to be intrigued with this entire process and direction:

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Here's the problem - I don't know if Viacom will live up to their promise, or not. The fact that Google is unwilling to hand over employee data tells me they're not so sure, either. And frankly I shouldn't have to care or have to worry about Viacom's trustworthiness. As a user I interacted only with Google, and there are implicit and explicit promised by Google to protect my data. If Google hands my data over to Viacom, it doesn't really matter to me if Viacom uses it or not. All I will remember is that Google gathered and stored information without my consent, and then handed it over at the first sign of trouble.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/12/AR2008071201472.html

However, I have noticed a change in Google's Privacy Policy (along with no version control date):

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Information sharing

We have a good faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of such information is reasonably necessary to (a) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request, (b) enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations thereof, (c) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues, or (d) protect against imminent harm to the rights, property or safety of Google, its users or the public as required or permitted by law.

Source: http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacypolicy.html

Nobody has time to listen; because they're desperately chasing the need of being heard.

[mnealtx 0]

Good news on this front, unless you work for Google:

From ZDNet

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Viacom and Google came to an agreement over what data Google will be handing over after a judge’s ruling last week. Orignally, it was believed that Google would be forced to hand over personally identifiable information about the viewing habits of all YouTube users. Thankfully, the two companies came to a partial agreement that will protect your personal information.

Unfortunately, for Google employees, that agreement does not include them. Their legal strategy, from what people are saying, could revolve around the fact that those Google Employees have either uploaded or viewed copyrighted content — which is almost a certainty. If they can prove that this has happened in the past, there may be some wiggle room in the DMCA which currently protects internet service providers from lawsuits like this.

Mike
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[BIGUN 1,406]

Second Quarter
Google: 3
Viacom: 3

So far, the judge appears to be leaning very heavily on the Electronic Communications Privacy Act [my interpretation follows]; whereby companies like YouTube and Google cannot reveal stored user data in a civil suit.

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Nobody has time to listen; because they're desperately chasing the need of being heard.

[mnealtx 0]

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Second Quarter
Google: 3
Viacom: 3

So far, the judge appears to be leaning very heavily on the Electronic Communications Privacy Act [my interpretation follows]; whereby companies like YouTube and Google cannot reveal stored user data in a civil suit.

This is a good thing, I think.

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You get a Sunny hug!

Eventually, yup!! I either need a layover at O'Hare or she needs to come visit Texas in October, one!!!

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706