As part of their battle with Google, a US court has ruled that Google must hand over the viewing habits of every user of YouTube to Viacom. This will include the log-in ID of users, IP addresses and video-clip details. Whilst the two companies involved are based in the USA, it is believed that details of users from all over the world will be divulged.

Considering that there are over 83 million videos on YouTube and about 500,000 users, I wish the person in charge of sifting through this information "good luck". Whilst some would call this one of the greatest invasions of privacy ever, the chance that this action could come back and haunt you (i.e. they see your illegal viewing habits and sue you) are a million-to-one as it's Google's fault for letting you host and view the material.

How do you feel about your details being handed over?

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

I'm not very happy about this at all. Handing over my personal information to a company that I have no contact with at all is completely out of line.

Yes I can understand Viacom's concerns about copyright infringement and wanting to clamp down on that, but why do they need my personal information to do just that?

And what are they going to do with my information once they have it?

The onus should be on google to be responsible for copyright violations. Viacom is a private company and as such has no right to my information being divulged from another source.

This post has been edited by moogie: Jul 3 2008, 05:36 PM

I don't feel sorry one bit, people know the laws of uploading illegal music, disgusting videos, such as someone getting blown up. Heck there are videos about computer hacking as well, but of course the funny thing is though, that when they start throwing people into jail because of this the prisons will fill up quicker then a glass of water. So the government will be to blame for the millions spent in prisons and wasting peoples time in court because the serious crimes are being put aside because a music company wants its money for someone stealing their music and blah blah.

Everyone is to blame and but it is hte users fault for doing these illegal activities and of course getting caught as well.

Oh dear, there goes my illegal viewing of anime. Now, on to google video!
Did the US court rule anything about that?

Obviously the viewers of the content or even those who uploaded it aren't going to be jailed. It's more that the log serves as evidence of how many copyrighted clips there are on YouTube and how many people are watching them, because, let's face it, YouTube's nothing without the copyrighted videos. They might, at the very most, prosecute the big law-breakers but they won't go any further - it's simply not economical to take all these people to court.

I don't really understand why are such records so important? What are they going to do with them? Maybe some statistics on what people watch, but what is the purpose of having statistics on the way people watch some home videos? I think it has to do with advertisements, but I fail to see a connection. If they really don't know what to do with their money, I suggest they make a donation to me.

And no one is going to jail. As far as I know it's not illegal to record music from the radio for example and since the quality of the sound and video are so low it's not like people don't buy albums because of YouTube. Going further YouTube helps the industry since it offers something like low quality samples which could turn into more sales.

I remember the BBC writing an article about chocolate, it was nothing important and it implied they had nothing better to do. This article is similar—it's nothing important and nothing to be worried about. I mean, what does having my IP address, my user id and my video information do to me? Youtube and Google already have that, what's another company? I have nothing to hide or be afraid of. People viewing the content can't be blamed for the content, except maybe if they've downloaded such content (see Firefox extentions). The only people that should be worried are those committing acts against already established laws, however little it may be. Are you one of those people that have uploaded illegal content, electriic ink?

I do beleive that legally, the owners/operators of Y"youTube" must request permision from the members individually to release such information. It IS an invasion of privacy, blatant at that, and the government is merely trying to remove more civil liberties from citizens. If google released my information to the US government, I WOULD sue for insane amounts of money. I am not a US citizen and therefore am not subject to american law unless I am on US soil, which I am not, nor have I been recently.

Wrong. You agree to their privacy policy, which states: