Viacom seeks to deflect YouTube heat in Google copyright case
By John Lister
As YouTube users continue to protest over privacy fears, Viacom has promised it won’t try to identify individual users from the logs it has secured as part of its copyright suit against Google.
The broadcast group put out a statement saying it is not interested in getting any personally identifiable information, adding that it’ll keep all the details in the logs secret except for what is necessary to proceed with its case in court.
After last week’s ruling, there had been fears that Viacom would try to sue individual users, which in turn prompted speculation YouTube users might launch a class action case against Google for keeping the information in the first place. Though it was open to question how easily and accurately Viacom could have tracked people through IP logs, it may have gone after people who’d used their real names as user names.
Viacom says these fears are overblown and points out that it has never taken legal action against an individual user for uploading or downloading copyrighted material to an on-line video site.
Not everyone is exempt from the promise, though: Viacom will be checking carefully to see if any Google or YouTube staff have uploaded content from MTV, Comedy Central or other Viacom properties. That could be portrayed as Google deliberately trying to boost traffic to the site, which would certainly strengthen Viacom’s case.
Aside from this, Viacom says it will work with Google to find a way to tell different users apart without identifying them. The goal for Viacom’s legal team is to prove people are more likely to use YouTube to watch copyrighted material than clips users have shot themselves.
Meanwhile Helen Popkin of MSNBC makes an interesting point about the case: most YouTube users only watch newsworthy clips of TV shows on the site rather than full episodes. And that suggests the problem isn’t that people inherently want to break copyright laws: rather it’s that TV producers don’t make enough shows which people want to watch in their entirety.
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July 9th, 2008
YouTube really needs to clean up its act. It plays all of us users as suckers that would believe it doesn’t share all of our info with whoever would pay for it.
Personally, I’m way more comfortable with having my records held by the court under a confidential order than if YouTube just passes it around to whoever throws some cash their way.
Grow up, Google.