Viacom, YouTube Come To Deal Regarding Your Personal Info
I know, you think that nothing that you do on YouTube is anything to worry about, you just watch funny clips of stuff your neighbors are doing and every now and then, maybe, a music video or a show clip that some fan put up there.
Viacom has a huge problem with those last two points, especially the show clips. Philippe Dauman (right), the Viacom chairman who is starting a new pay cable channel is the near future, thought it was a winning idea to attempt to seize in court a listing of exactly what you've been doing on the video sharing site. He wanted that with your unique identifiers, like you IP address and your login.
He's not gonna get that.
Also, when he offers his new pay cable channel up for subscription, young people that he's targetting, I hope you remember this.
The data include YouTube user names, when a video was watched, and the user's internet protocol address. The order, by Judge Louis Stanton of the Federal District Court in Manhattan, had privacy advocates and many in the internet world up in arms.
Kurt Opsahl of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said at the time that "The court's erroneous ruling is a setback to privacy rights and will allow Viacom to see what you are watching on YouTube."
The two sides have now reached an agreement for Google to provide a database that preserves users' anonymity by substituting values for user name and IP addresses.
"We are pleased to report that Viacom, MTV, and other litigants have backed off their original demand for all users' viewing histories, and we will not be providing that information," Google said on its YouTube blog.
There's more at this link from the Electronic Frontier Foundation
