Posted on 07/03/2008 4:21:29 PM PDT by Nachum
SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge in New York has ordered Google to turn over to Viacom a database linking users of YouTube, the Web’s largest video site by far, with every clip they have watched there.
The order raised concerns among users and privacy advocates that the online video viewing habits of tens of millions of people could be exposed. But Google and Viacom said they were hoping to come up with a way to protect the anonymity of YouTube viewers.
Viacom said that the information would be safeguarded by a protective order restricting access to the data to outside advisers, who will use it solely to press Viacom’s $1 billion copyright suit against Google
(Excerpt) Read more at biz.yahoo.com ...
Google has no one to blame except for themselves.
If they had not violated viewers privacy by LOGGING their viewing habits, there would be nothing to surrender.
But Big Media wants a permanent record so they can cull viewing habits. Exactly what Viacommie want to garner from it.
If they want to know HOW MANY times a clip was viewed, that information was already displayed onscreen.
First, they came for the YouTubers,
and I did not speak out,
for I was not a YouTuber....
Google/Youtube/Viacom will target user IP addresses for their lawsuits against Americans.
It all reminds me of the RIAA's lawsuits against college students because they downloaded music to their MP3 players.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070301-8953.html
http://www.insidevandy.com/drupal/node/3753
So, if I’ve got this right, Viacom’s *advertisers* have put pressure on Viacom to sue Google because video clips from Viacom programs are on youtube.com.
And the court has ordered Google to hand over viewing history, presumably, so the advertisers can “track” down who watched the Viacom program’s clips, and therefore, get some sort of “discount” from Viacom. (and since poop rolls downhill, Viacom’s gone after Google.)
This article was very poorly written and hard to figure out.
People who produce these shows and musical tracks sink their time and effort so the masses can enjoy it for free?
xpect more of these cases.
They shouldn’t have logged it in the first place. But if they have to respond then they should make it worthless by giving Viacom every single, printed, hard copy page of it.
Hee hee hee. . . that’s GREAT!
People who produce these shows and musical tracks sink their time and effort so the masses can enjoy it for free?
________________________________________________
Looks like karma is coming up to bite ‘em in the rear end. . .most of these “same” people also use their time and effort to push socialistic causes down the throats of these masses. . .
It doesn’t make any sense that Viacom would go after the viewing habits, specifically. It seems more likely that they would want to target the people who posted video material, perhaps to sue them.
Actually, the suits are coming from Hollywood middlemen who want more billions from you to fund their socialist causes. Google should stop making logs and use its legal might to delay turning over the existing logs until they are thoroughly out of date. let the Hollymedia crash.
So I drive around town throwing out monopoly money. Young children run around picking it up all excited about the novelty of it. Now I get the courts to order businesses to turn over footage from their security cameras so I can see who picked the money up. Then I send out the leg breaker lawyers to extract real money for my loss of monopoly money. It's a racket. Viacom is simply another branch or organized crime.
That's where this is headed.
You either pay a one time annual fee for an all you can eat digital bar or you can pay per play.
Creators need to be paid.
That’s where this is headed.
“Both companies have argued that such data cannot be used to unmask the identities of individual users with certainty. But in many cases, technology experts and others have been able to link I.P. addresses to individuals using records of their online activities.”
Can someone explain this to me? I thought all they needed was the IP address and the time of the data request and they could go back to their service provider and get all the info they want.
Maybe some of it isn’t useful because the ISPs dump their logs after some period of time so the data is not available forever.
Seems like Yahoo could just use the username and drop the storage of the IP address as it doesn’t really serve any purpose.
Exactly.
This is insidious.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.