July 4, 2008 – (HOSTSEARCH.COM) – A recent court ruling has compelled Google to release its YouTube log containing the IP addresses of millions of users around the world. The log also indentifies which videos were accessed by a particular IP address. The ruling was made by US District Court judge Louis Stanton, who is hearing Viacom’s action against YouTube’s alleged copyright infringement. YouTube, a service intended for ‘original videos’, did not prevent copyrighted materials being loaded onto its’ severs, the company claims.
The court’s ruling is intended to allow Viacom to support a case which is based on the popularity of copyrighted materials over other, unique content videos on the site. The company has suggested around 160,000 unauthorized video clips containing portions of the TV shows it produces, and even entire shows, were posted on YouTube servers. Viacom estimates these clips have been viewed 1.5 billion times and is claiming $1,000,000,000 in compensation. Full details of the case can be found at http://news.justia.com/cases/featured/new-york/nysdce/1:2007cv02103/302164/.
The court’s ruling has created consternation within elements of Internet community, and fingers are being pointed at Google. A number of privacy groups have for years petitioned Google to either make IP addresses anonymous, or remove them entirely. In an open letter to Google posted on the Privacy International website (http://www.privacyinternational.org/), Simon Davies, the organization’s Director, states that in its’ recently published report showing privacy ranking of leading companies operating on the Internet, “Google Inc performed very poorly, scoring lowest among the other major companies that we surveyed”. In Google’s defense, the company has asked the court to allow it to provide details to Viacom without providing IP addresses.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (http://www.eff.org/), an organization that bills itself as “the first line of defense” when freedom is attacked on the Internet or other electronic media, suggested the ruling was potentially a reversal of rights. Kurt Opsahl, the organization’s attorney, suggested, "The court's erroneous ruling is a set-back to privacy rights and will allow Viacom to see what you are watching on YouTube”. He went on to say, "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."
