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Your right to privacy is no longer as private as you once thought or hoped. By court order, Google is being forced to hand over all the records of every video watched by YouTube users. This information will include users’ names as well as IP addresses, and the request has Google lawyers arguing invasion of privacy.  The judge in his ruling, however, found this argument “speculative” and ordered them to turn over the logs on a set of four terabyte hard drives.

The purpose behind the lawsuit is that Viacom intends to prove that infringing material is more prominent than user-created videos. This would most likely increase Google’s liability if they are found guilty of contributory infringement. The suit was originally filed in March of 2007, with Viacom seeking over $1 billion in damages. Google tried to argue that the law provides a “safe harbor for online services so long as they comply with copyright take-down requests.”  Apparently Judge Louis L. Stanton, the senior judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, who issued the opinion and order, wasn’t buying it, since the order also requires Google to supply copies of any video that was taken down for any reason.

The judge actually turned Google’s own defense of its data retention policies, that IP addresses of computers aren’t personally revealing in and of themselves, against it to justify the log dump. As expected, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is already up in arms, loudly proclaiming the order a violation of the Video Privacy Protection act that “threatens to expose deeply private information.”

It seems to me that Viacom is asking for way more information than needed to prove infringement. And if they do get their hands on all that user information like the are asking for, the whole thing just screams lawsuits. Lawsuits by Viacom against individual users, and lawsuits by users against Google.  I think with this specific court order, Judge Stanton has opened one heck of a Pandora’s box.

Via [Wired]