Google does evil, sells out users in YouTube vs Viacom court case loss
Google made headlines when it violated its unofficial “Do No Evil” motto by setting up its users for a loss prior to its court date against Viacom. The claims made by Google before the court date were used against it, and ultimately against the users of Google’s property YouTube, when the judge decided in favor of Viacom
What did Google do prior to court to throw its loyal YouTube users under the bus? It declared that IP addresses did not qualify as personal data a while back when defending its own use of user data for its Adsense and Adwords programs. In saying that it was ok for Google to use that data, Google opened the door for outside companies to sue for access to it.
Users of Google all over the world cried foul at the court decision, and they also cried foul at Google. For a company that claims to have only the best interests of its users at heart it has made several decisions of late that call that into question.
Of special concern to users should be how this decision to hand over user data to a third party, Viacom, will affect people using Google’s other services. Services like Google Health depend on privacy, and this decision rips the inner core of security out of Google’s claims for privacy, even causing it to amend its privacy rules and put a link to them on its own front page. I know that I, for one, never planned on using Google Health because of privacy concerns, and now I would fight any organization forcing me to use it tooth and nail.
Another interesting thing about the decision is that it has the potential to affect every YouTube user in the short term. Viacom does not watermark its videos and shows, which means that any user could have innocently watched a Viacom video or several without even knowing that it was a Viacom property.
Google’s response to the court loss was less than inspiring for loyal users of its YouTube service: “We are disappointed the court granted Viacom’s overreaching demand for viewing history,” Google senior litigation counsel Catherine Lacavera said. “We will ask Viacom to respect users’ privacy and allow us to anonymize the logs before producing them under the court’s order.”
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July 6th, 2008
If there’s money to be made from Google, whether ethical or unethical, there will most certainly be some bloody greedy attorney in on the deal. Why only now does everyone climb on the money bandwagon? Only after You Tube has been sold to Google did these problems arise. Typical bloody greedy companies – take advantage of free advertising on YouTube, and then cash in a second time. I’m pretty sure that M$ is in on this deal….
July 6th, 2008
Hey George, Perhaps you should consider getting a blog considering your comment to this blog is over twice the size.