Davey Winder
Thursday, 03 July 2008 16:14
Business IT -
Networking
Page 2 of 3
Describing Google's defence that, really rather
obviously, handing over such data would inevitably invade the privacy
of its users the judge said that this was merely speculative.
Of course, Google does not come out of this
without some stain to its character on the user privacy front. After
all, we know now that every single time you watch a video clip on
YouTube it logs your user ID, your IP address, the date and time you
were watching and details of the clip itself - even if the video
happens to be embedded within a site other than YouTube.
While the judge took the view that Viacom had no claim on the YouTube
source code nor the Google advertising schema, and quite frankly why it
though it had is beyond me, his common sense flew out of the window
when it came matters of user privacy.
Indeed, Judge Stanton also ordered Google to hand over all copies of
all videos ever taken down from YouTube. Not just the ones that violate
Viacom copyright, mind you, but every single one ever taken down for
any reason at all.
What Judge Stanton appears to have overlooked is the protection offered
to users under the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) which was passed
by US Congress in order to protect the deeply personal nature of what
video content people choose to view. This came about after a much
publicised case involving a newspaper disclosing the video rental
records of a Supreme Court nominee.
It would appear that the court took the usage of the term 'video tape
service providers' in the VPPA legislation literally, and did not
consider streaming Internet video as the same thing. However, legal
experts argue that the VPPA is not limited to the technology that was
available at the time of its enactment, and even includes 'similar
audio visual materials' in order to get around this limitation.
What does the EFF have to say about all this, and will Google launch an appeal against the ruling? Read on to find out...
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