Posted 07/15/08 at 07:52:52 AM by Chris Moody

It seems that either Viacom came to their senses about making Google turn over user data on YouTube, or they didn’t like the bad press that their suit was generating.  They have reached a deal to protect the privacy YouTube watchers everywhere and will allow Google to anonymize YouTube user data.

Previously Viacom succeeded in getting Judge Louis Stanton of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to order Google to turn over as evidence a database what videos users watch, the users' computer addresses, and their usernames. Many groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation argued that the order "threatens to expose deeply private information" and violated the Video Privacy Protection Act.  Whether the Act, created when VCRs were high tech, could be applied to YouTube was debatable. Viacom and Google’s deal avoids the legal snarl all together.

If you are into deciphering legalese (and we can assume you are into self flagellation  too) you can read the details here.

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Google, legal, Privacy, law, youtube, viacom, deal, rights

Posted 07/07/08 at 09:13:51 AM by Chris Moody

Following up from a previous post, Google is asking Viacom to respect users’ privacy and let them to anonymize the logs before handling them over to Viacom under the court order. “We are disappointed the court granted Viacom’s overreaching demand for viewing history,” Google said.

Efluxmedia.com says that Viacom had said in a New York Times interview, “The information that is produced by Google is going to be limited to outside advisors who can use it solely for the purpose of enforcing our rights against YouTube.”

So the data is going to go to third parties. Somehow, that doesn’t make me feel any better about user privacy. We can hope that there will be a legal challenge mounted in the next few days against releasing user data unfiltered to Viacom.

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Google, lawsuit, Privacy, youtube, viacom

Posted 07/03/08 at 12:08:06 PM by Chris Moody

Have you been uploading copyright protected content on YouTube? Have you even been looking at it? Viacom wants to know, and a Judge has ruled in the recent Viacom v. Google case that Google has to turn over “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”.

Kurt Opsahl with the Electronic Frontier Foundation disagrees with the courts ruling arguing that the court, “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 was passed in 1988 as a result of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's video rental history being published during his Supreme Court nomination.

I agree with Opsahl, someone’s YouTube history should be just as private as their video rental history. Privacy is harder and harder to maintain in a world where technology is outstripping existing laws, which often must be judged by people with little experience in technology. We certainly don’t need which version of Star Wars Kid we were watching to be available for anyone to look at, or for companies to go trolling for lawsuits in data. Where do you come down on the issue?

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Google, Privacy, law, youtube, viacom, eff, court

Posted 06/27/08 at 09:33:22 PM by Paul Lilly

Looks like Maximum PC isn't the only one sporting an overhauled site these days. AtomFilms, owned by MTV Networks (who in turn is owned by Viacom), relaunches today as simply Atom.com. More than a name change, the redesigned site will focus exclusively on comedy because, well, the web apparently isn't funny enough already.

Click through the jump to find out about the many other changes, and how you can not only be a part of it, but perhaps profit from it too.

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Software, streaming, video, funny, viacom, atom, AtomFilms, Comedy Central

Posted 09/02/07 at 09:32:13 PM by Erin Simon

Viacom sends a DMCA takedown to a YouTube user for pirating material Viacom had pirated from him first. Infringement is a two-way street.

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star wars, piracy, copyright, law, infringement, youtube, viacom, commercial, fair use