Kurt Opsahl on Viacom v Google

Louis Stanton, the presiding judge in the Viacom v Google case has ordered Google to provide him with records regarding all users watching of YouTube videos, in clear conflict with federal law protecting us:

[from Court Ruling Will Expose Viewing Habits of YouTube Users | Electronic Frontier Foundation by Kurt Opsahl]

Yesterday, in the Viacom v. Google litigation, the federal court for the Southern District of New York ordered Google to produce to Viacom (over Google's objections):

all data from the Logging database concerning each time a YouTube video has been viewed on the YouTube website or through embedding on a third-party website

The court’s order grants Viacom's request and erroneously ignores the protections of the federal Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), and threatens to expose deeply private information about what videos are watched by YouTube users. The VPPA passed after a newspaper disclosed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's video rental records. As Congress recognized, your selection of videos to watch is deeply personal and deserves the strongest protection

Omigod. What's next? Will they put software in our PCs tracking every webpage we visit?

Comments

[Ross Hill]

Well Stowe, depending on which boxes you have ticked, I think you'll find Google's Toolbar already does tracks that too :)

[Brian Dunbar]

I don't know you well enough to know if this is outrage or mock-outrage.

One hopes that it is the latter.

[gregory]

pretty sure there are back doors in windows, in google, in isp's, "they" can already know just about anything they want

but keep cooking anyway