US Judge Rules YouTube Must Give Viacom Full Viewing Log [Including All YouTube User Log-in IDs]

A US judge has ruled that Google, the owners of YouTube, must make its entire viewing log available to Viacom who are presently engaged with Google concerning allegations of copyright infringement in what the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has termed as being ‘set-back to privacy rights’.

The judgement, which will see Viacom gain all video viewing logs (totalling some 12 terabytes of data) as well as all user log-in IDs has been fought for by Viacom who maintain that this information will allow it to establish just how many YouTube users have been watching Viacom material on the video sharing site – Viacom claim that around 160,000 clips of its programming are available on YouTube in breach of copyright - though Viacom’s somewhat over-zealous request that Google make the YouTube source code available to them as well was declined by the judge on the basis that the code is a ‘trade secret’.

‘The Court’s erroneous ruling is a set-back to privacy rights, and will allow Viacom to see what you are watching on YouTube,’ said the EFF ‘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.’

Interestingly, the EFF also claim that the judgement forcing Google to had over User IDs is potentially unlawful as such information includes personally identifiable data, thus making the judgement very much a civil rights issue.

[via BBC News]