Court orders YouTube to give Viacom video logs

By ANICK JESDANUN , AP Internet Writer, Technology / Internet

(AP) -- Dismissing privacy concerns, a federal judge overseeing a $1 billion copyright-infringement lawsuit against YouTube has ordered the popular online video-sharing service to disclose who watches which video clips and when.

Content from The Associated Press expires 15 days after original publication date. For more information about The Associated Press, please visit www.ap.org .

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Posted by nano999 07/03/08 17:03

Rank: 4.9/5 after 8 votes

Middle finger to you Viacom! Shame on Google for keeping logs of that information. Why doesn't Google just "lose" the data? I'm sure the Bush Admin. can show them how it's done.

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Posted by ontheinternets 07/03/08 20:39

Rank: 5/5 after 5 votes

I don't see that it's sufficiently reasonable to request stats about non-Viacom clips. Even if they're going after that data, then why can't they just request the number of views per clip? Or, allow Google to generate a number of unique viewers per relevant clip? (rather than release any sort of identifying information about the viewers) This is a civil case anyway. They ought to leave the general public's privacy entirely protected.

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Posted by Graeme 07/03/08 20:55

Rank: 5/5 after 3 votes

Under the copyright law the remediation is to have the offending items removed. It sounds like a fishing expedition from Viacom.

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Posted by nilbud 07/03/08 22:13

Rank: 5/5 after 3 votes

If all viacom clips are removed it will kill viacom. Out of sight out of mind, Redstone must be gone senile if he doesn't get it.

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Posted by WolfAtTheDoor 07/03/08 23:26

Rank: 5/5 after 6 votes

There's a disturbing trend of disappearing privacy. It's almost the 'norm' now days. Of course those of us who complain about it are obviously either terrorists or have something to hide.

*sigh*

And Republicans wonder why voters are fleeing the party.

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Posted by menkaur 07/03/08 23:39

Rank: 5/5 after 2 votes

us government treats every citizen as terrorist or a pirate or whatever. us is becoming police state

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Posted by Arikin 07/04/08 00:26

Rank: 5/5 after 2 votes

If the IP address is the only identifiable evidence then for Viacom to track down viewers they would need to get the logs from the ISP. Who was using that IP at that time. That would require another court order.

But why would Viacom track down viewers? Wouldn't they want the person who uploaded the video??? Is that information in the logs too? Is Viacom going to take the uploaders to court also? If so how many times can one sue for the same infraction?

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Posted by DeeSmith 07/04/08 16:51

Rank: 5/5 after 1 vote

Paying client access to massive user databases is the real bread-and-butter profit maker for Google. Viacom sued to get access for which it would normally have to pay up front, using a relatively flimsy excuse. In turn, it will sell some of the user information it has scammed from this court decision.

Who needs email address and 'real names' (laughing at that one) if you have the user's IP addy?

Anybody and everybody who can ante up the coin, can access Googles user databases. What a sham front, this 'We try protect our users confidentiality' but we keep getting sued!!".

Hence, the burgeoning niche market of 'cover your tracks' software addons.