Unit Structures Fred Stutzman’s thoughts about information, social networks and technology.

Ongoing Analysis of YouTube-Viacom

News has moved quickly since Wednesday’s ruling by Judge Louis Stanton in Viacom et. al. vs YouTube et. al., the landmark ruling ordering the transfer of all YouTube user histories. Foremost, Google has indicated it will not appeal the ruling, choosing instead to fight the battle in the court of public opinion. To that extent, Google lawyers have reached out to Viacom, offering to anonymize the transferred logs. Viacom attorneys seem to be open to the option, but have not agreed to anything binding.

Viacom attorneys have stated that they won’t be able to follow the RIAA model and suing individual users. In an article posted today, Saul Hansell of the New York Times disagrees, stating: “Viacom says that it isn’t going to use the information from Google to sue individual YouTube users for copyright infringement, but there is nothing under the law to stop it from doing so.” This wealth of information, tied with a ribbon and presented to Viacom, will present intriguing, appealing options. Why not sue YouTube users, demolishing trust in the net’s eminent video-distribution brand?

What role does Google play in this mess? While not a viable option for a public company, Google could have settled the lawsuit in lieu of turning over our information. Additionally, Google’s practices of storing information for 18 months – far longer than necessary – compounds the snakebite here. If Google regularly expunged or anonymized our records, damage could have been minimized.

As Google rolls over, it is hard not to be angry about the situation. Why does Viacom get a record of every legal video I’ve watched? What right do they have? Wendy Seltzer writes about the dangerous precedent being set: “I worry that this discovery demand is just the first of a wave, as more litigants recognize the data gold mines that online service providers have been gathering: search terms, blog readership and posting habits, video viewing, and browsing might all “lead to the discovery of admissible evidence” — if the privacy barriers are as low as Judge Stanton indicates, won’t others follow Viacom’s lead? A gold mine for litigants becomes a tar pit for online services’ user.”

Furthermore, this class of data – one generated in a seemingly private transaction between one’s self and a server – should be recognized and protected as unique. Not only for the particularly private nature of the information, but the scope of the information that comes with these log transfers. It is one thing to subpoena phone records, it is another thing to get a digital recording of every phone call one has made. This transfer is both content and history; that the information Viacom is receiving is federally protected only adds to the terrible irony.

Wow. Um, guess I was wrong about that whole “won’t stand up to appeal” thing.

Yeeesh. The only plus that I can think of is that the shock of this revelation *might* open a space whereby some content providers provide or can be pushed to provide better TOSS or EULAs. Then again, maybe the reverse is true and they’ll just start passing around our personal information with greater impunity.

This is why we need to “define the terms” – that idea was brilliant!

This is a complete invasion of privacy on the part of Viacom and our user information doesn’t have any relevance to their billion dollar lawsuit against Google. Google should be able to anatomize the user information before handing over 12 terabytes of personal information so my privacy and the privacy of millions like me are protected. I have a campaign that will force Viacom to allow Google/YouTube to protect us or 100,000 will boycott Viacom and all its subsidiaries: https://www.thepoint.com/campaigns/stop-viacom-from-invading-our-you-tube-privacy