YouTube User IDs to stay private.
Wednesday, July 16th, 2008
In the $1 billion law suit accusing YouTube of copyright infringement, Viacom won’t be told the names of users who watch video clips on the Google owned site.
Viacom, are suing YouTube for $1 billion, saying that Youtube became the size that they are now by allowing TV shows produced by the media giant on their website.
The High Court Judge overseeing the case originally ordered YouTube to hand over their entire database of records which would include usernames, IP addresses and viewing habits. This would allow Viacom to prove that copyrighted material, such as ‘Spongebob Squarepants’ and ‘The Daily Show with John Stewart’ were more heavily watched than the amature clips that YouTube promotes.
To protect user privacy and preserve the integrity of the website, YouTube argued that the user id’s and IP addresses were unnecessary and that viewing habits could be analysed without this data.
Any data released to Viacom will be under a court enforced confedentiality order and Viacom has said it will not use any of the data to persue individual users.
