Judge orders Google to turn over the Youtube usage logs to Viacom

[Kees Stravers <kees.stravers@xxxxxxxxx>]

Another nice example of how you hardly have any privacy on the internet.
A judge has ordered Google to hand over the complete usage logs of
Youtube, four hard disks of 1 terabyte, to Viacom. The logs contain data
about all Youtube clips that have been watched and the user id and IP
number of who has watched them. They also contain the user id and the IP
number data of all clips that have been uploaded to Youtube. So now
Viacom knows what clips <b>you</b> watched and what clips <b>you</b>
uploaded. You and all other Youtube users. Not some videos, but all
videos. Not some users, but all users.

Viacom is only allowed to look for data about clips of their own
copyrighted tv shows, since that is what the suit is about, they claim
Google does not do enough to remove these copyrighted programs, and that
copyrighted programs are more popular than user generated content. But
who knows what they will come up with using this data. And now that it
is known that this data exists, who knows who is going to try to get it
too. This is a goldmine of data to have if you want to set up a video
platform to compete with Youtube.

You might remember all the hoopla about the <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_scandal";>AOL search
data scandal</a>. If this Youtube data is ever stolen, the AOL scandal
will pale into insignificance.

Read about it on Wired here:

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/07/judge-orders-yo.html

The Electronic Frontier Foundation argues that these logs of the viewing
habits of people are deeply private information that should not have
been released:

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