Judge Orders YouTube to Give All User Histories to Viacom
[Quote:]
Google will have to turn over every record of every video watched by YouTube users, including users’ names and IP addresses, to Viacom, which is suing Google for allowing clips of its copyright videos to appear on YouTube, a judge ruled Wednesday.
Viacom wants the data to prove that infringing material is more popular than user-created videos, which could be used to increase Google’s liability if it is found guilty of contributory infringement.
[..]
The order also requires Google to turn over copies of all videos that it has taken down for any reason.
So, if google has taken down a video from some non-viacom entity, for any reason, viacom gets a copy, in violation of the original owners’ copyrights?
Sounds like Viacom is fishing for evidence. Hope they have some big discs, or are ready to process a live stream that will go for months.
As for videos that have been taken down, I hope the folks at YouTube had the smarts to actually delete them - best not to keep content that has been taken down in case some dumb judge comes along and demands you hand it over. I suspect a court order will mean that there is no copyright violation though, as long as Viacom deletes it all once they’ve finished their fishing expedition. A smarter move would have been to use an independent intermediary to do the research though.
Still sad that the courts don’t understand what user generated content sites are, and how they work.