Dismissingprivacy concerns, a federal judge overseeing a $1 billioncopyright-infringement lawsuit against YouTube has ordered the popularonline video-sharing service to disclose who watches which video clipsand when.
A judge ordered YouTube to produce data on which of its videos get viewed most often and by whom.
U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton authorized full access to the YouTube logs afterViacom Inc. and other copyright holders argued that they needed thedata to show whether their copyright-protected videos are more heavilywatched than amateur clips.
The data would not be publiclyreleased but disclosed only to the plaintiffs, and it would includeless 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.
Thedatabase includes information on when each video gets played, which canbe used to determine how often a clip is viewed. Attached to each entryis each viewer's unique login ID and the Internet Protocol, or IP,address for that viewer's computer.
Stanton ruled this weekthat the plaintiffs had a legitimate need for the information and thatthe privacy concerns are speculative.
Stanton rejected arequest from the plaintiffs for Google to disclose the source code --the technical secret sauce -- powering its market-leading searchengine, saying there's no evidence Google manipulated its searchalgorithms to treat copyright-infringing videos differently.
Thecourt has yet to rule on Google's requests to question comedians JonStewart 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 "willfullyinfringe" copyrights on Viacom shows, which include Comedy Central's"The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and Nickelodeon's "SpongeBobSquarePants" 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 copyrightinfringement and can do more to stop it, a finding that could dissolvethe immunity protections that service providers have when they merelyhost 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 arguedthat the IP address alone cannot identify a specific individual.
Ina statement, Google said it was "disappointed the court grantedViacom's overreaching demand for viewing history. We are asking Viacomto respect users' privacy and allow us to anonymize the logs beforeproducing them under the court's order."
Google did not say whether it would appeal the ruling or seek to narrow it.
Stanton'sruling made only passing reference to a 1988 federal law barring thedisclosure of specific video materials that subscribers request orobtain.
Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney with theElectronic Frontier Foundation, said Stanton should have consideredthat law along with constitutional free-speech rights, including aright 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.
Viacomsaid it isn't seeking any user's identity. The company said any dataprovided "will be used exclusively for the purpose of proving our caseagainst YouTube and Google (and) will be handled subject to a courtprotective order and in a highly confidential manner."
Thisis not the first time Google has fought the disclosure of userinformation it had been stockpiling. While gathering evidence for acase involving online pornography, the U.S. Justice Departmentsubpoenaed Google and other search engines for lists of search requestsmade by their users.
After Google resisted, a federal judgeruled that Google was obliged to turn over only a sample of Webaddresses in its search index, not the actual search terms requested.
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/biztech/07/03/youtubelawsuit.ap/index.html
A judge ordered YouTube to produce data on which of its videos get viewed most often and by whom.
U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton authorized full access to the YouTube logs afterViacom Inc. and other copyright holders argued that they needed thedata to show whether their copyright-protected videos are more heavilywatched than amateur clips.
The data would not be publiclyreleased but disclosed only to the plaintiffs, and it would includeless 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.
Thedatabase includes information on when each video gets played, which canbe used to determine how often a clip is viewed. Attached to each entryis each viewer's unique login ID and the Internet Protocol, or IP,address for that viewer's computer.
Stanton ruled this weekthat the plaintiffs had a legitimate need for the information and thatthe privacy concerns are speculative.
Stanton rejected arequest from the plaintiffs for Google to disclose the source code --the technical secret sauce -- powering its market-leading searchengine, saying there's no evidence Google manipulated its searchalgorithms to treat copyright-infringing videos differently.
Thecourt has yet to rule on Google's requests to question comedians JonStewart 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 "willfullyinfringe" copyrights on Viacom shows, which include Comedy Central's"The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and Nickelodeon's "SpongeBobSquarePants" 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 copyrightinfringement and can do more to stop it, a finding that could dissolvethe immunity protections that service providers have when they merelyhost 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 arguedthat the IP address alone cannot identify a specific individual.
Ina statement, Google said it was "disappointed the court grantedViacom's overreaching demand for viewing history. We are asking Viacomto respect users' privacy and allow us to anonymize the logs beforeproducing them under the court's order."
Google did not say whether it would appeal the ruling or seek to narrow it.
Stanton'sruling made only passing reference to a 1988 federal law barring thedisclosure of specific video materials that subscribers request orobtain.
Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney with theElectronic Frontier Foundation, said Stanton should have consideredthat law along with constitutional free-speech rights, including aright 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.
Viacomsaid it isn't seeking any user's identity. The company said any dataprovided "will be used exclusively for the purpose of proving our caseagainst YouTube and Google (and) will be handled subject to a courtprotective order and in a highly confidential manner."
Thisis not the first time Google has fought the disclosure of userinformation it had been stockpiling. While gathering evidence for acase involving online pornography, the U.S. Justice Departmentsubpoenaed Google and other search engines for lists of search requestsmade by their users.
After Google resisted, a federal judgeruled that Google was obliged to turn over only a sample of Webaddresses in its search index, not the actual search terms requested.
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/biztech/07/03/youtubelawsuit.ap/index.html
