Google must turn over user histories to Viacom

[The Ozzman]

EDIT: By 'histories', I mean YouTube histories. Sorry.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2008/07/03/dlgoogle203.xml

Yes, according to the U.S. District Court for Southern New York. Judge Louis Stanton on Wednesday ruled that Google must provide Viacom with YouTube user histories in Viacom's ongoing $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against the video Web site.

Google must hand over all the information contained in its logging database, including the login ID of the users who have watched videos, the time they started to watch the video, users' IP address, and the video identifier.

America FUCK YEAH!

 

[False Joe]

So are they gonna sue Youtube, or people watching the videos?

 

[genocide roach]

totally lame
~gR~

 

[The Ozzman]

So are they gonna sue Youtube, or people watching the videos?

They are going to sue YouTube and not the viewers of YouTube...at least at the outset

 

[False Joe]

Woo. Luckily I generally only use Youtube for very softcore pr0n and funny things.

 

[The Ozzman]

I've viewed an Exodus music vid a few times and the SNL Celebrity Jeopardy skits before they were removed.

I don't use youtube on a regular basis, nor do I log in on a regular basis, so I'm probably okay

 

[False Joe]

They'll probably only go after the big ones anyway.

The ones that go on every single day and spend half their time viewing copyrighted material.

 

[viewerfromnihil]

i do haha

 

[Melodeath]

Teach the interntent a fucking lesson amiquiterite

 

[cookiecutter]

This is dumb. I can understand if they had TV shows or easily downloadable videos on there, but they don't so I don't see what everyone is so upset about..

 

[The Ozzman]

Mainly music videos and clips from shows

 

[entanglement]

The entire data would be over several GB's, and Google should want to settle this out of court, because they wouldnt want to surrender the privacy of their registered users and get in even deeper shit.

 

[The Ozzman]

They've already agreed to surrender it

 

[Mort Divine]

And slowly but surely net neutrality is taking shots to the jugular.

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

Gay.

 

[NinjaGeek]

Honestly, who actually watches legal content on youtube though? I agree with Viacom that Youtube is mainly powered by illegal stuff, but this is still rather lame. I don't see why they need the viewer information when they discovered hundreds of thousands of illegal videos and they have the view count to show how integral they are. Furthermore couldn't statistics just be provided or some sort of anonymity for the youtube users? this is lame.

 

[Dem0n0id]

I guess viacom still hasn't got used to the laws of the internet!
Not that i support it completely but hey, they still make their billion if this goes through
All this, in the end means nothing to me. I use Youtube only to check out songs of obscure/lesser known bands before buying an album.(MySpace most of the time has only the latest material) Some of it might not be legal but the last thing these bands would care about is their material being on youtube.(even if they did, they can only request google to remove it)

EDIT: Also, wouldn't it actually be BETTER for viacom if others watch their videos on youtube? I'm sure 95% of the ppl don't use any of those youtube video-capture thingies and surely many would end up checking out viacom's website if they liked it. Seems like they are trying to benefit from both over here.(the lawsuit as well as the free advertisement )
All in all, this argument might be flawed somewhere though. I might have missed out on something >.<