Court orders YouTube to give video logs to Viacom

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Every Breaking Wave

Every Breaking Wave

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AP said:
Dismissing privacy concerns, a federal judge overseeing a $1 billion copyright-infringement lawsuit against YouTube has ordered the popular online video-sharing service to disclose who watches which video clips and when.

U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton authorized full access to the YouTube logs after Viacom Inc. and other copyright holders argued that they needed the data to show whether their copyright-protected videos are more heavily watched than amateur clips.

The data would not be publicly released but disclosed only to the plaintiffs, and it would include less specific identifiers than a user's real name or e-mail address.

Lawyers for Google Inc., which owns YouTube, said producing 12 terabytes of data — equivalent to the text of roughly 12 million books — would be expensive, time-consuming and a threat to users' privacy.

The database includes information on when each video gets played, which can be used to determine how often a clip is viewed. Attached to each entry is each viewer's unique login ID and the Internet Protocol, or IP, address for that viewer's computer.

Stanton ruled this week that the plaintiffs had a legitimate need for the information and that the privacy concerns are speculative.

Stanton rejected a request from the plaintiffs for Google to disclose the source code — the technical secret sauce — powering its market-leading search engine, saying there's no evidence Google manipulated its search algorithms to treat copyright-infringing videos differently.

The court has yet to rule on Google's requests to question comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert of Viacom's Comedy Central.

Viacom is seeking at least $1 billion in damages from Google, saying YouTube has built a business by using the Internet to "willfully infringe" copyrights on Viacom shows, which include Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and Nickelodeon's "SpongeBob SquarePants" cartoon.

The lawsuit was combined with a similar case filed by a British soccer league and other parties.

Together, the plaintiffs are trying to prove that YouTube has known of copyright infringement and can do more to stop it, a finding that could dissolve the immunity protections that service providers have when they merely host content submitted by their users.

Though Google said giving the plaintiffs access to YouTube viewer data would threaten users' privacy, Stanton referred to Google's own blog entry in which the company argued that the IP address alone cannot identify a specific individual.

In a statement, Google said it was "disappointed the court granted Viacom's overreaching demand for viewing history. We are asking Viacom to respect users' privacy and allow us to anonymize the logs before producing them under the court's order."

Google did not say whether it would appeal the ruling or seek to narrow it.

Stanton's ruling made only passing reference to a 1988 federal law barring the disclosure of specific video materials that subscribers request or obtain.

Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said Stanton should have considered that law along with constitutional free-speech rights, including a right to read or view materials anonymously.

He said a user's ID can sometimes include identifying information such as a first initial and last name.

Viacom said it isn't seeking any user's identity. The company said any data provided "will be used exclusively for the purpose of proving our case against YouTube and Google (and) will be handled subject to a court protective order and in a highly confidential manner."

This is not the first time Google has fought the disclosure of user information it had been stockpiling. While gathering evidence for a case involving online pornography, the U.S. Justice Department subpoenaed Google and other search engines for lists of search requests made by their users.

After Google resisted, a federal judge ruled that Google was obliged to turn over only a sample of Web addresses in its search index, not the actual search terms requested.
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Well, Youtube probably does know of the copyright infringing and whatnot. I mean you have to be blind to not see that. However, I don't think it's right for them to turn over people's IP adresses. Maybe put a LOT of people in trouble with the law.
 
Honestly, how much is Viacom getting hurt by these clips? I mean, seriously. Say what you will about the anime industry and all, that's legit to an extent, but Viacom is a multibillion dollar corporation. I don't think a few Daily Show or Sponge Bob clips are going to hurt their bottom line one iota. This is just like the RIAA and MPAA- a few otherwise decent people are going to get their lives ruined in the name of a few more dollars on the yearly revenue report and scaring a few filthy, dirty COPYRIGHT INFRINGERS off.

God save us all.
 
I love how Google seems to bend so easily to the will of the Chinese government, yet they seem to resist the US government at every turn.
 
China has a bigger population.

Therefore, there are more potential YouTube users in China.

More users=higher revenue for YouTube, so they'd best be doing the will of their Commie masters.

Sadly, as with all things, it all comes down to the Almighty Dollar for YouTube.
 
Attention Readers:

Bullshit.

That is all.
 
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Viacom is going to sue Youtube so hard, that could eventually spell the end of the fun!
It is pretty much impossible for youtube to control & administrate the uploaded videos to check them for copyright infringement and Viacom really has tons of money and lawyers to throw at Youtube. So unless they completely change the system of video uploading Viacom might force them to close down.
 
GrnMarvl13 said:
I love how Google seems to bend so easily to the will of the Chinese government, yet they seem to resist the US government at every turn.
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This is more because of the different legal systems between the countries, and how the governments of each country manage their citizens. For China, it was a choice of deal with the devil or get out, with the government able to block all their citizens access to Google at will, with barely a peep heard in complaint about it in public. Now imagine if the US government tried pulling something similar on its citizens? It'd be the equivalent of shutting down Wall Street, or forcing the simultaneous closure of every McDonalds, KFC and Burger King franchise.
 
Smeargle said:
Viacom is going to sue Youtube so hard, that could eventually spell the end of the fun!
It is pretty much impossible for youtube to control & administrate the uploaded videos to check them for copyright infringement and Viacom really has tons of money and lawyers to throw at Youtube. So unless they completely change the system of video uploading Viacom might force them to close down.
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Uh, Google has tons of money too lol
 
betagold said:
Attention Readers:

Bullshit.

That is all.
Click to expand...
A truer word was never said.

I really do feel sorry for google, they have so many differnt and brilliant ideas, and yet they are hassled constantly by governments and corporate monsters threatening to abolish free speech, due to some retarded little thing called 'copyright'. It truly is a miracle they have not gone completely insane yet.
also-'a British soccer league'? Thats just bull. for one thing, the premiership have nothing against clips being recorded by onlookers, Its just one of them things. What would a game of football be without everyone pulling out cameras to capture a magnificent goal, before telling the world about it.

In my opinion, uploading whole episodes (excluding fansubs) no, uploading clips, yes.
 
Misty said:
Uh, Google has tons of money too lol
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Oh I do know that, but it begs the question if they are going to use it in a lawsuit they will probably lose. I think they will be forced to change the way Youtube currently works and potentially ban users that post copyrighted content. Simply because Google has quite a bit of money does not mean they will use it in this situation or that the amount of cash can win them lawsuits, Microsoft's past is a testament to that.
 
Archaic said:
This is more because of the different legal systems between the countries, and how the governments of each country manage their citizens. For China, it was a choice of deal with the devil or get out, with the government able to block all their citizens access to Google at will, with barely a peep heard in complaint about it in public. Now imagine if the US government tried pulling something similar on its citizens? It'd be the equivalent of shutting down Wall Street, or forcing the simultaneous closure of every McDonalds, KFC and Burger King franchise.
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Oh, so it was more of a move to keep the Chinese people as connected as possible given the extremely harsh controls the state puts on the internet. Alright, THAT makes sense and actually goes well with giving the US government a hard time.
 
Smeargle said:
Oh I do know that, but it begs the question if they are going to use it in a lawsuit they will probably lose. I think they will be forced to change the way Youtube currently works and potentially ban users that post copyrighted content. Simply because Google has quite a bit of money does not mean they will use it in this situation or that the amount of cash can win them lawsuits, Microsoft's past is a testament to that.
Click to expand...

Youtube will never be 'forced' to radically change its ways, or to conform with one party at least. I feel youtube is fine as it is now, minus the large corporations complaining that they are losing pennies. Youtube actually has got a good system for dealing with illegal videos, but these only tend to apply to videos of a criminal nature.
 
Having watched a BBC report regarding the phenomena of happy slapping and reading further articles that focus on the video sharing aspect of it I can conclude that no you are simply incorrect on this issue. They do not have a good system regarding criminal videos, the claim that they have a good system in place is quite simply false. There have been a number of complaints by police forces around the world regarding the fact that many individuals upload videos documenting their assaults or physical altercations with others and that these videos stay up for weeks and weeks until they are discovered (sometimes even years). It is mainly a user based control system, which from the onset is already inherently flawed. So no their system is faulty and useless, the question is whether the judicial proceedings will have an effect on this or not.
 
However, YouTube is also a valuable asset for police to use. Here in Canada (and I'm sure in other coutries too), they've uploaded security videos of crime scenes, and caught quite a few suspects from anonymous messages.
 
If it's just clips, I just don't see how it would hurt anything. It's FREE ADS, guys! And what else are people supposed to do if a show hasn't been aired in years and the company is sitting on the property, not putting it on DVD or even late-night reruns? Stupid.
 
Youtube seems to always be good about taking down some videos when asked to... I know that they had a history of removing Pokemon/Pocket Monsters videos, and they have always been very good at removing viacom controlled video clips as well (I even had a mid 90's Beavis and Butthead commercial removed a couple of years ago for this). They also are always quick and prompt to take down anything related to Prince (the artist formally known as...). I find it a complete shame that Viacom is taking Youtube to court over this, especially knowing that they have been very good about removing copyright violating videos as quickly as they can from the experience I have had. This doesn't just include US copyrights either, I have seen shows only released in Japan and a few other Asian countries removed quickly as well.

Also, I am not sure but I would not be surprised if there are a large number of viewers under the age of 13 on Youtube, and I believe that it is illegal to give out any information pertaining to them. If this is the case, there might be a possibility of lawsuits due to this as well later.
 
They aren't good at taking them down and they aren't good at monitoring the videos uploaded, I don't understand why you pretend that it's the case.
 
Woingenau, have you ever uploaded an infringing video to Youtube and had it deleted? I know of a few people who have lost their accounts over the years due to Pokemon clips being uploaded, and I personally have had short Pokemon clips that I had uploaded removed from Youtube as well due to copyright violations. Also, I have had Viacom videos removed over the years, and have known others who have as well. Things owned by Prince/New Power Generation are generally removed very quickly, even sometimes in cases where Prince didn't even have rights to the song being removed (such as with his cover of Radiohead's "Creep," which Radiohead fought to have it allowed to remain on Youtube."

I also have kept up with a few Anime series such as Kiteretsu Daihyakka (not licensed in the US) and watched as a person who was ripping full episodes from DVD have his account banned and every single thing he had uploaded removed, so Youtube's willingness to work with anyone who actually asks them to remove a video for proper copyright infringement reasons even extends outside of the United States.

Now, if we are to make this a proper debate, you should give me some examples where you know that Viacom, or any other company has asked to have something that infringes on their copyright removed, and were completely ignored.
 
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