Google has been ordered by a federal judge in New York to turn over a database of all personal viewing  histories related to its leading online video sharing site YouTube, records totaling 12 terabytes of customer information including who has watched each video, to media company Viacom as it sought to press a $1 billion copyright suit it initiated in March 2007 against the Mountain View, California-based Internet search leader. Viacom Claims YouTube Users Contribute Pirated Works Viacom has alleged that YouTube, the world's largest video sharing Web service which Google purchased for $1.65 billion in 2006, allowed users to illegally share material for which it is the copyright holder, a violation of the Copyright Act of 1976, and asked for the usage data to prove that viewing video content protected by copyright has been even more popular on YouTube than watching content that is not protected. "YouTube has filled its library with entire episodes and movies and significant segments of popular copyrighted programming from Plaintiffs and other copyright owners," Viacom argued in the lawsuit. "YouTube users contribute pirated copyrighted works to YouTube by the thousands," the company added. Viacom sought to have Google give them all the usage data it has collected concerning "each time a YouTube video has been viewed on the YouTube website or through embedding on a third-party website," a request the court granted. The ruling issued on July 1 by United States District Court Judge Louis L. Stanton, which was made public Wednesday, ordered Google to give Viacom its YouTube usage database containing each username, associated computer Internet Protocol (I.P.) addresses and the names and descriptions of each video users of YouTube had watched. Google's YouTube usage database contains information about users worldwide, causing privacy advocates and Internet users both in the United States and globally to question the severity of the provision in Wednesday's ruling, which would give Viacom the viewing histories of all YouTube users. Providing Viacom with its YouTube usage history database "would be expensive and time-consuming," Google argued. YouTube Usernames And I.P. Address Exposures Ordered Judge Stanton's order stated that, "While the Logging database is large, all of its contents can be copied onto a few 'over-the-shelf' four-terabyte hard drives," and that Viacom's "need for the data outweighs the unquantified and unsubstantiated cost of producing that information." In the court filing Google said that its YouTube logging database contained several elements, including "the unique 'login I.D.' of the  user who watched it, the time when the user started to watch the video, the Internet protocol address other devices connected to the Internet use to identify the user’s computer [...], and the identifier for the video." Google said that it was disappointed with the court's decision. "We are disappointed the court granted Viacom’s overreaching demand for viewing history," Google senior litigation counsel Catherine Lacavera said in a statement. "We will ask Viacom to respect users' privacy and allow us to anonymise the logs before producing them under the court's order," Lacavera added. Both Viacom and Google said discussions had taken place regarding methods to safeguard the vast YouTube usage database by making certain portions anonymous, and a Thursday letter from Google requested that it be allowed to redact usernames and I.P. addresses. "We request that plaintiffs agree that YouTube may redact usernames and I.P. addresses from the viewing data in the interests of protecting user privacy," Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati partner David H. Kramer wrote in the letter. Google and Viacom Seeking Methods To Keep Data Anonymous Viacom said that it was looking into methods to protect the YouTube history database. "We are investigating techniques, including anonymization, to enhance the security of information that will be produced," said Viacom lawyer Michael Fricklas in a recent report in The New York Times. "The information that is produced by Google is going to be limited to outside advisers who can use it solely for the purpose of enforcing our rights against YouTube and Google. I can unequivocally state that we will not use any of this information to enforce rights against end users," Fricklas said. Google had argued that it was not guilty of Viacom's allegations because of legal protection afforded online companies that remove any copyrighted material that is brought to their attention in the form of copyright takedown requests, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. The act protects online firms that lack "actual or imputed knowledge of the infringing activity," and those that act "promptly to remove or disable access to the material." Judge Stanton ruled that Google's arguments regarding the harm that would arise from disclosing the YouTube viewing histories of all its users was not sufficient and merely "speculative," and issued an order requiring Google to turn over the world's biggest online video usage database. The Electronic Frontier Foundation said the order was a violation of the Video Privacy Protection Act which "threatens to expose deeply private information," and likened YouTube to a modern version of a videotape delivery system, which it said would be protected under provisions of the act intended to safeguard "information which identifies a person as having requested or obtained specific video materials or services." The YouTube usage history database was likely to contain usernames that include the names of consumers and not just online aliases, which would also be protected under the V.P.P.A., according to the online advocacy group. Online Privacy Groups Urge Reversal Of Order "We urge Viacom to back off this overbroad request and Google to take all steps necessary to challenge this order and protect the rights of its users," the E.F.F. added. The court order by Judge Stanton also required Google to give Viacom complete copies of every video that it has ever deleted from YouTube for any reason, a  number which Google argued was in the millions. Judge Stanton's order saw the burden of going through these videos resting with Viacom, which argued that it had the ability to do so. The court denied Viacom's request for the proprietary source code for the search functions of both YouTube and for Google's leading search engine, calling them "critical trade secret[s]." The court granted Google an order protecting the source code, which the Mountain View firm said "is the product of over a thousand person-years of work." The court found that Viacom could not offer evidence showing that the search function used on the YouTube Web site was able to "discriminate between infringing and non-infringing videos." While Google argued that "no source code in existence today can distinguish between infringing and noninfringing video clips -- certainly not without the active participation of rights holders," Viacom attempted to show that the only way it could verify the claims was to look through Google's source code. Viacom Request For Google Source Code Trade Secrets Denied The court also denied Viacom's request for Google's advertising database layout, and found that "only trivial percentages of the fields and tables in the database 'possibly relate to advertising revenue generated from advertisements run on YouTube'". Google was also ordered to give Viacom information about private YouTube videos, including how often each has been viewed, however Viacom's request for copies of all of YouTube's private videos was denied. Viacom told the court that it had gathered a list of some 160,000 YouTube video clips containing material for which it was the copyright holder, and that it believed those clips had been viewed more than 1.5 billion times. Google implemented new filtering technology aimed at preventing the distribution of YouTube video material protected by copyright shortly after Viacom launched its legal action against the search giant. Viacom asked the court to force Google to turn over the source code for its “Video ID” program, a motion which Judge Stanton denied. Google Ordered To Turn Over All Personal YouTube Viewing Records To Viacom In its arguments Google said Viacom "would likely be able to determine the viewing and video uploading habits of YouTube’s users based on the user’s login I.D. and the user’s I.P. address," however the ruling by Judge Stanton sided with Viacom and ordered Google to provide the information. One member of the popular online discussion forums operated by WebmasterWorld, a community of webmasters and search engine marketing  (SEM) professionals founded by chief executive Brett Tabke, worried that the YouTube usage history data could fall into the wrong hands. "That information can be used just like AOL's search history data was used," noted a WebmasterWorld member using the handle "creeking," who cautioned that "personal interests can be exposed." Another member of the Web site posted what they claimed was a surefire way to "rid themselves of YouTube privacy issues," followed by a link to the YouTube page for deleting a user's account. Some industry analysts on the WebmasterWorld site worried that despite Viacom's assurances that it would not use any YouTube usage information provided by Google to track down and pursue legal action, such activity could nonetheless occur, similar to methods used by the music industry to combat music piracy. Related Links:
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