Viacom Won’t See Your YouTube Viewing Habits – Just Chad’s
ADOTAS – Whoopsy-daisy: it turns out Viacom doesn’t need all of the dirt on your YouTube viewing habits.
Judge Louis Stanton had ordered Google to fork over the details of millions of YouTube users to Viacom, which would theoretically help the company prepare its $1 billion case on copyright infringement. The U.S. District Court judge for Southern New York would allow all of the information contained in its database (including login ID, IP addresses, video identifiers and the timing of the viewing) to be handed over.
But in the wake of a flurry of protests from users and privacy advocates, Viacom has backed down.
“We are pleased to report that Viacom, MTV and other litigants have backed off their original demand for all users’ viewing histories and we will not be providing that information,” YouTube said in a release.
The new deal will allow the video-sharing site to hide user IDs and IP addresses – the methodology has not been agreed on yet and YouTube has seven days to come up with a plan.
YouTube said it is “committed to protecting your privacy and we’ll continue to fight for your right to share and broadcast your work on YouTube.”
The company’s employees are not protected under the deal, however. Their identities will be revealed to Viacom – along with their viewing histories – in what is seen as an attempt to figure out if workers uploaded or knew about copyrighted works on the site.
And if, say, CEO Chad Hurley did in fact know about copyrighted works on YouTube, all best are off for its protection under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998.
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