“A shrimp brakes its back in a whales' fight”
(Korean proverb)
Howard and I were bemused by the latest development of Viacom case against Google. The news from NYT read “A federal judge has ordered Google to turn over to Viacom its records of which users watched which videos on YouTube, the Web's largest video site by far.”
For us, there is an issue here (besides Google’s carelessness in protecting users’ privacy).
The Youtube user’s data is clearly at stake in the evidence of the case of Viacom’s $1 billion copyright lawsuit against Google. However, by ordering Google to relinquish ALL users’ details (the login name and IP address) to Viacom, the judge has compromised the privacy of the genuine Youtube users who make and share (upload & download) the User Generated Content (UCC). The NYT article asserts that, “Google and Viacom said they were hoping to come up with a way to protect the anonymity of the site's visitors.”
Surely, this should not be a matter between two commercial companies. This should have been a condition made by the judge to protect the genuine Youtube users, whose personal data does not belong to Viacom.
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