Google Pleads For Anonymization Of User Logs In Viacom Case

Morshad published 07 Jul 2008, 15:54 in main - 336 views

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The matter between Viacom and Google’s YouTube goes beyond the copyright infringement accusations, as a court order compels Google to hand over user activity data and raises serious privacy issues.

According to the court order, Viacom gets the right to access usernames, IP addresses and videos watched by YouTube users, in order to prove that videos that infringe copyrights are the most watched, and that YouTube is a website that deliberately supports copyright infringement.

One day after the court order, Google decided to respond to it, by asking Viacom to respect users’ privacy and allow them to anonymize the logs before handling them over under the court order. “We are disappointed the court granted Viacom’s overreaching demand for viewing history,” Google said on Thursday.

Theoretically, under the court order, Viacom is compelled to use the data for the sole purpose of supporting the copyright accusations against Google. At the same time, the judge dismissed Google’s arguments that the court violates user privacy, saying that the concerns are simply speculative.

Are they really speculative? The ethical implications of this case could go as far as the AOL search fiasco, when data of over 650,000 users got on the Internet and made possible the accurate localization of some users.

Google made a point by arguing against granting Viacom access to their source code, but they didn’t manage to convince the judge that privacy concerns are real once they are forced to hand over user activity data.

Viacom said in a New York Times interview that they are investigating techniques, including anonymization, in order to enhance the security of the information that will be produced, adding that Viacom will not have direct access to the data: “The information that is produced by Google is going to be limited to outside advisors who can use it solely for the purpose of enforcing our rights against YouTube.”

As reassuring as Viacom is trying to be, both Google and privacy advocates believe the court order to go against privacy protections for users, and as Google said before, the lawsuit could be considered a threat to the freedom of Internet.

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