Did you ever think, Google might store too much information about you? In fact they do and in fact because of that this data is now also available to Viacom!
As Wired reports, Louis Stantion, judge in a New York court, now ordered that
Google will have to turn over every record of every video watched by YouTube users, including users‘ names and IP addresses, to Viacom, which is suing Google for allowing clips of its copyright videos to appear on YouTube.
This is a HUGE impact on privacy and will in fact not only hit US users but users worldwide. German privacy experts are also very concerned about this as it shows how problematic it is if you user servers in e.g. the US where US law applies. In the European Union IP addresses belong to personal data and have special protection (for now).
Going further that road bad things could happen, like not being allowed to enter a country anymore because something problematic is somewhere stored about you without you knowing about it, be it legitimate or not.
This ruling and Google’s data collection fanatism also might have a severe impact on the whole industry as people will become very careful in using such services.
Viacom will also lose in this process as illegal video/audio sharing will not stop but go more and more underground to a place where it’s hard to reach people and make them honest customers again (by offering them better deals than Viacom does now).
As we in the EU also face a vote on some very problematic new law regarding telecommunications including content filtering, trusted computing and much more this week seems indeed to be a very black week.
PS: I wonder what’s happening to my copyright now as I uploaded some videos and Viacom is getting them now, something I did not allow to happen. But wait, I probably gave all my right about my data to Youtube when signing up, right?Technorati Tags: viacom, google, court, privacy