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Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Google, Viacom Agree To Protect YouTube Users' Identites

Google and Viacom have reached an agreement to mask the identities of YouTube users before their viewing records are disclosed as part of a copyright infringement lawsuit.
The deal calls for Google to anonymize the screennames, IP addresses and visitor IDs of YouTube users before turning over their viewing history to Viacom. In a stipulation signed late Monday night, the parties also said they wouldn't attempt to circumvent the encryption.

But Google and Viacom couldn't come to terms about whether to anonymize records of Google employees. Viacom still wants to know which videos they watched and/or uploaded to the site. If YouTube staff uploaded clips themselves to draw visitors to the site, that could damage Google's defense under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which arguably immunizes the site from copyright infringement committed by users. If YouTube staff viewed clips they knew were pirated, that could also weaken Google's position in court. The parties stipulated that if they can't decide how to handle Google employees' records, they'll return to court in two weeks.

With the anonymized user data, the entertainment company is apparently trying to prove that pirated clips are big draws on YouTube. If YouTube benefited from piracy, it could lose the safe harbor protections of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which generally immunize sites from liability based on material submitted by users. But there's a very big leap between showing that, say, a Jon Stewart clip is popular on YouTube and proving that the company built its brand on copyrighted content. Even if copyrighted material drew some users to the site, would that really mean YouTube directly profited? After all, it's not as if YouTube was charging users to view those clips.

Regardless, with this agreement, Google and Viacom defused the most incendiary portion of a two-week old court order in the $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit.

News of the deal is certainly a welcome relief for many YouTube users. But that doesn't mean the events of the last two weeks are good news for privacy rights. On the contrary, Stanton's original order is still on the books, where it might influence other courts in other cases. Kurt Opsahl of the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation today warned in a blog post that the agreement will only protect users if none of the parties later change their minds. Opsahl added that Google employees, like everyone else, have the right to keep video histories private under the federal Video Privacy Protection Act.

Opsahl would still like to see Google fight the original order in court. "We believe that best way to resolve this would be to appeal the court's July 1st order because it violates these statutory and constitutional standards by ordering the disclosure of personally identifiable information (including IP addresses) without requiring Viacom to meet certain requirements, including (among others) notifying YouTube users that their information is being sought and demonstrating a compelling need for that personal information," Opsahl wrote.

Of course, if Google is worried about whether Stanton's order bodes poorly for the future, an even better way to deal with it is to stop storing so much information. As long as Google keeps detailed information about its users, people's privacy remains at risk.

to get more infor mation please click here: Google, Viacom Agree To Protect YouTube Users' Identites
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