Privacy rights stolen (YouTube)

[BingoT]

NEW YORK (AP) -- Dismissing privacy concerns, a federal judge overseeing a $1 billion copyright-infringement lawsuit against YouTube has ordered the popular online video-sharing service to disclose who watches which video clips and when.

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[Mousey]

There is NO privacy as far as our legal system and government are concerned. If they want to know it, they'll get it -- one way or another.

 

[vinylweatherman]

What on earth are Google logging and storing that level of information for anyway? It is THEY who have infringed privacy, by gathering all this information in the first place. Had Google not been so keen to collect all this data, there would be nothing to hand over to the judge.

I am not sure it is necessary anyway, if all that is wanted is the number of times infringing video is accessed against the accesses of non-copyrighted works. I remember youtube publically displaying the number of "hits" each clip has had, which seems to be what Viacom are looking into. Perhaps Viacom want to "go fishing" in that 12 Terrabyte ocean after they have counted the number of views, perhaps refining the information down to ISPs and regions from where the viewers come from, maybe to pursue other infringement cases on the backs of what they find.

What they really want to be after are the details of users who POSTED the infringing material, as they can be prosecuted - maybe this is what they hope to distill from these logs under the guise of gathering broad statistical data on viewing counts.