Well, Duh: Viacom Backs Off On YouTube Records
Not even two weeks after a federal court ruling that would have handed over gigabytes of data about the viewing habits of YouTube users to Viacom, that entertainment conglomerate decided to allow YouTube to strip out personal data from these records.
Google subsidiary YouTube posted a note about this deal on its blog yesterday. The PDF copy of the agreement specifies that YouTube will replace data that could have pointed to a specific person with anonymized identifiers -- instead of "robpegoraro" viewing a clip, Viacom will only know that "randomuser1421" saw that clip:
When producing data from the Logging Database pursuant to the Order, Defendants shall substitute values while preserving uniqueness for entries in the following fields: User ID, IP Address and Visitor ID.
That doesn't mean that a YouTuber's identity might not still surface through a pattern of video viewing, though it would take a lot more work to identify somebody that way. But that's immaterial. Viacom shouldn't require those details in the first place to prove any claim that YouTube built its business on the unauthorized sharing of copyrighted works by Viacom and its ilk.
What I want to know is, why didn't Viacom seek such a common-sense solution in the first place? Whatever made its executives think this wouldn't earn them a guilty verdict in the court of public opinion? You'd think that a company that deals so heavily in image and perception could be a little smarter about this sort of thing.
By Rob Pegoraro |
July 15, 2008; 11:35 AM ET
| Category:
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Posted by: ddd | July 15, 2008 4:15 PM
this site is tough mang!
Posted by: bill | July 15, 2008 4:21 PM
Rob, you have to separate Viacom's lawyers (most likely an outside firm) from Viacom's corporate leadership. Generally these cases are prosecuted by the lawyers, and only rarely does corporate management get involved. In discovery, the first rule is to ask for EVERYTHING. If you don't ask for it up front, you generally can't get it later. So I'm not at all surprised that Viacom's lawyers asked for all of the detail they could get. Nor am I surprised that they negotiated it down to something 'reasonable'.
Yeah, it would have been better for the lawyers to have pulled their heads out of their law books and considered the circumstances, but they're paid to fight and win -- losing is the other guy's problem.
If you want to learn a lot more about how civil law between corporations is conducted, browse on over to Groklaw (http://groklaw.net/) -- there's tons of information about civil suits are handled (with particular focus on SCO vs the world, but also many other issues).
Posted by: Craig | July 15, 2008 4:43 PM
Craig, I understand about lawyers being the ones who decided asking for everything. However, the final responsibility rests with Viacom's top management. An example : say you decide to hire an ad agency to create an ad for your new product. Would you not review the ad completely, including to see if it might be offensive to some ?
Same goes if you hire a law firm.
When I was getting my divorce (it was, unfortunately, a long process :-( ) my attorney reviewed everything with me for my approval.
Posted by: GSG | July 15, 2008 6:23 PM
With an IP address, I can tell you a lot. With that info being handed over it is still invasion of privacy.
Posted by: Sven Ljungholm | July 15, 2008 6:48 PM
Sven,
Read the quote Rob posted: "...Defendants shall substitute values while preserving uniqueness for entries in the following fields: User ID, IP Address and Visitor ID." IP addresses, like user ID, will have random, but unique to each user, values substituted.
Not that they couldn't come out later, but for now users are "safe".
Posted by: Jim | July 16, 2008 12:04 AM
Perhaps just another example of why most corporations do NOT want lawyers making business decisions for them.
Posted by: brucerealtor | July 16, 2008 2:16 AM
I'm still perplexed at why Rob P. can't bring himself to blame the real culprit: Google. Google is the one keeping a permanent record of every clip viewed by everyone, and every IP logged. Rob is wrong at the wrong party. I know it's scary to take on Google, since they could but Washington Post Co. someday, but c'mon Rob, get real! Google is the bad guy here. They could easily delete all this after 60 days, or immediately. They keep it forever.
And don't forget that it is the same Google that pretends in its European regulatory filings that IP addresses do NOT identify individual users. Now they admit that they do.
Rob, you need to step up and speak truth to power.
Posted by: Tom Francis | July 16, 2008 11:04 AM
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great!