YouTube Forced to Hand Over User History to Viacom

A New York judge on Wednesday supported Viacom’s request for Google to hand over data on their users, including their names and their viewing history on YouTube. Initially, their request demanded Google give up the source code for the popular video sharing site, but that particular clause was denied.

The information will be used as evidence against Google to prove that copyrighted content on the web is more popular than original material, which would lead to Viacom to ask for a settlement fee. Google’s argued against the ruling, saying that revealing the data would "invade its users’ privacy," but the judge responded by saying any concerns were purely "speculative."

As one might expect, the judge’s decision has been taken under fire by the Internet community on the whole, who have no say whether or not their data can be used by a third party. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has already taken a stance to support Google and fight the stance because it violates the Video Privacy Protection Act, and word has recently come out that the personal data will not be viewable by Viacom, but by "outside ad visors."

My major problem with Viacom’s request is the fact that the very data they’re searching for, anonymous video views, are already available on YouTube’s own site. It’s really a painful process to determine what the most popular videos on the site are, so forcing Google to give away users’ names and IP addresses is a blatant attempt to garner evidence to attack their users.

It’s hard to disagree that the judge’s comment about privacy concerns being "speculative," and not tangible, can only serve to highlight his incompetence. Clearly, if anyone in the equation had any regard for privacy, the whole deal would have been swiftly rejected.

Google will have to turn over every record of every video watched by YouTube users, including users’ names and IP addresses, to Viacom, which is suing Google for allowing clips of its copyright videos to appear on YouTube, a judge ruled Wednesday.