Viacom Reverses Demands for YouTube Histories
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A court ruling in early July 2008 stated that Google had to give Viacom the history of viewers on YouTube. It seems that Viacom has reversed its demands:
“Viacom has backed off a request to gain access to all YouTube user histories after public outcry over privacy concerns, according to a YouTube blog post.
“We are pleased to report that Viacom, MTV and other litigants have backed off their original demand for all users’ viewing histories and we will not be providing that information,” YouTube said in a statement.”
link: Viacom Decides It Doesn’t Need YouTube Histories
This is a small victory for privacy advocates. The user’s identifiers such as the IP address will be redacted. Nevertheless, this litigation between Viacom and YouTube, whose parent company is Google, raises the issues of these user data bases. Are these data bases absolutely necessary? Furthermore, if such data bases are maintained, how long should the information be kept?
With internet security and privacy issues becoming an matter of contention between technology companies and governments, it is incumbent upon organizations such as Google to state clearly how these data are to be used. To state that such disclosures infringe upon proprietary rights of the company simply leaves the site visitor guessing… and at risk.
Catherine Forsythe
2 Comments
E2001
July 16th, 2008
at 6:44am
What gets me is the number of people who think this actually IS a privacy issue! When you sign up with an ISP, they give you a ‘public’ IP number. YouTube is a ‘public’ website. Therefore, any information about what you do with your ‘public’ IP on a ‘public’ website is ‘public’ domain. It’s just that simple.
Think of it as going to the local WalMart. While it may be impolite to stare; you don’t have a “right” to have people “not look at you” while you’re shopping.
Besides; the only people who need to worry about having their IPs logged are the ones actually DOING the illegal uploading. So GET OVER IT!
Shawn
July 16th, 2008
at 4:41pm
As is often the case, the ‘get over it’ crowd is really missing the point.
When people are upset about the collection and storage of this kind of information, it’s not always because they want to hide illegal activity. The problem is more about the fact that the data can be used for purposes that may very well violate their rights.
To use an outlandish example, let’s say you have some unnatural fascination with things that go BOOM. So, you crawl around YouTube looking at various explosions and stuff like that. Then, some time later, Homeland Security decides they want to ‘interview’ everybody who fits their profile as a terrorist…
Who knows, maybe your fascination with things that go BOOM is entirely innocent, but now you’re a SUSPECT. You get to go through the joy of being put on a terror watch list, no fly list, maybe even get an all expenses trip to Gitmo.
Think it can’t happen? It can’t IF these databases aren’t compiled and kept around. Trouble is, the ARE and they are kept just in case somebody figures out some cool new way to use the info. Not everybody has the same idea of what is cool.
If/when this kind of data is kept, it should be clearly stated how it is going to be used, AND users should have confidence that some court won’t enable some other nefarious purpose for the database, in my humble opinion.