As part of its $1 billion law suit against Google and YouTube
for mass copyright infringement, MTV and Comedy Central owner
Viacom won the right to be sent a record of every video ever
watched on YouTube.
Google opposed the move and there was an outcry about the
implications for users' privacy of the release of the data. Now
Viacom has agreed to let Google anonymise the data before it is
sent to it.
"When producing data from the Logging Database pursuant to the
Order, Defendants shall substitute values while preserving
uniqueness for entries in the following fields: User ID, IP Address
and Visitor ID," said an agreement between the two companies lodged
with the US District Court for the Southern District of New
York.
The case centres on whether or not YouTube should be responsible
for the fact that it hosts and delivers millions of videos that
infringe other people's copyright.
YouTube says that it is only a service provider and cannot
screen all material, but that it takes down infringing material
when informed of its existence. Viacom says that the company
profits from infringement and does not do enough to ensure users
have the rights to material they upload.
Viacom had said that it wanted the data to assist it in finding
out whether or not copyright infringing material is watched more
than non-infringing material.
Viacom's suit has been rolled together with another suit by the
Football Association Premier League.
"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," said a
YouTube statement on the company's blog.
"In addition, Viacom and the plaintiffs had originally demanded
access to users' private videos, our search technology, and our
video identification technology. Our lawyers strongly opposed each
of those demands and the court sided with us," it said.
Struan Robertson, a technology lawyer with Pinsent Masons, the
law firm behind OUT-LAW, said last week that the scale of Viacom's
data request was excessive.
"The volume of data to be disclosed seems entirely
disproportionate to Viacom's purpose. If they only need to gauge
the popularity of the content, statistical data should suffice.
There should be no need for IP addresses or login names," he
said.
