YouTube Ordered To Release User Data
A New York Federal judge ordered Google’s YouTube to release user data due to copyright infringement lawsuit by Viacom. This $1 billion lawsuit has granted Viacom’s request YouTube to release its 12 terabyte user database which will reveal the viewing habits of viewers. This data will contain user id, viewing times, ip address and the identification of the video.
Privacy activists from the Electronic Frontier Foundation said the ruling disregarded the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act passed by Congress to protect people’s video-viewing habits from being disclosed.
Google senior litigation counsel Catherine Lacavera said, We are disappointed the court granted Viacom’s overreaching demand for viewing history,” she said. “We will ask Viacom to respect users’ privacy and allow us to anonymize the logs before producing them under the court’s order.
Source: Court order on YouTube user data fans privacy fears
on July 10th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
This is a complete invasion of privacy on the part of Viacom and our user information doesn’t have any relevance to their billion dollar lawsuit against Google. Google should be able to anatomize the user information before handing over 12 terabytes of personal information so my privacy and the privacy of millions like me are protected. I have a campaign that will force Viacom to allow Google/YouTube to protect us or 100,000 will boycott Viacom and all its subsidiaries: https://www.thepoint.com/campaigns/stop-viacom-from-invading-our-you-tube-privacy