Youtube court case

[knight66]

"Google must divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched any video on YouTube, a US court has ruled.

The ruling comes as part of Google's legal battle with Viacom over allegations of copyright infringement."

Here is the full item. It is possible we may have to review whether the site continues hosting links to Youtube.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7488009.stm

Viacom is only one of a number of companies that are lining up to ask for the hit details. It seems likely that those most at risk are those who have posted protected clips onto the site, also places where collections of clips have been made available, such as here.

Mike

[DavidRoss]

Apparently the purpose of the ruling is to enable Viacom to document viewing of copyrighted material to show that it's intrinsic and not incidental to the appeal of youtube's business.   

[knight66]

Although they say no person will be identified; a london litigation specialist told the BBC on a programme I watched, that this was probably just the first step and that Viacom and others, once they have looked at the information will be looking for redress and possibly to pursue individuals. To get at the individuals, the internet providers would have to be asked to supply addresses etc for the specific customers involved.

Mike

[Lethevich]

I am not sure what it is supposed to achieve, why are they aiming at YouTube - one of the most strongly moderated sites on the net. It's impossible to run an effective and especially vaguely large-scale piracy campaign on such a site. A lot of "illegal material" on sites like YouTube is not the image many news organisations like to give average people - rips of Pirates of the Caribbean and lots of naughty pirates leeching big films like that. YT prevents that very effectively. A lot of it is documentaries and other material which has zero chance of ever being rebroadcast, but which the producers jealously guard anyway. I think that this just demonstrates the total cluelessness of the media corporations flexing their legal muscles, and is demonstrative of what a weak position they are in. What are they expecting to do, put lawsuits against individuals for watching a news clip that was not "authorised"? That would be thrown out of court, as it's the problem of the host, not the viewer who stumbled upon it. And to set such a legal precient over something so feeble is completely dumb on the government's part

Although they say no person will be identified; a london litigation specialist told the BBC on a programme I watched, that this was probably just the first step and that Viacom and others, once they have looked at the information will be looking for redress and possibly to pursue individuals. To get at the individuals, the internet providers would have to be asked to supply addresses etc for the specific customers involved.

Total BS about "no individuals will be targetted" - this is their BS talk to get the legal precident and the government swallowed it (morons). They wanted a foot in the door, I guess. If someone is given such freedom over data, they will abuse it - especially over zealous media conglomerates, which behave like lunatics over the threat of filesharing, such as Sony putting viruses on music discs to stop people ripping, etc.

Edit: Actually, judging from my even worse than usual spelling in this post, I must be ranting