The IT Nerd

Google has been ordered to hand over data detailing the video-watching habits of YouTube users at the request of Viacom who is suing Google over copyright issues. This could potential identify millions of people around the world and erodes expectations of privacy on the Internet:

“We are disappointed the court granted Viacom’s overreaching demand for viewing history,” Google’s senior litigation counsel Catherine Lacavera said in an e-mail. “We will ask Viacom to respect users’ privacy and allow us to anonymize the logs before producing them under the court’s order.”

Google hasn’t decided if it will appeal the decision, but I for one hope that they do. This is too important not to fight.

This entry was posted on July 3, 2008 at 8:20 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Google, Privacy, Viacom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.