Google Told to Turn Over User Data of YouTube

[Don]

Source: New York Times.com
July 4, 2008

Google Told to Turn Over User Data of YouTube

By MIGUEL HELFT
SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge has ordered Google to turn over to Viacom its records of which users watched which videos on YouTube, the Web’s largest video site by far.

The order raised concerns among YouTube users and privacy advocates that the video viewing habits of tens of millions of people could be exposed. But Google and Viacom said they were hoping to come up with a way to protect the anonymity of the site’s visitors.

Viacom also said that the information would be safeguarded by a protective order restricting access to the data to outside lawyers, who will use it solely to press Viacom’s $1 billion copyright suit against Google.

Still, the judge’s order, which was made public late Wednesday, renewed concerns among privacy advocates that Internet companies like Google are collecting unprecedented amounts of private information that could be misused or fall unexpectedly into the hands of third parties.

“These very large databases of transactional information become honey pots for law enforcement or for litigants,” said Chris Hoofnagle, a senior fellow at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.

For every video on YouTube, the judge required Google to turn over to Viacom the login name of every user who had watched it, and the address of their computer, known as an I.P. or Internet protocol address.

Both companies have argued that I.P. addresses alone cannot be used to unmask the identities of individuals with certainty. But in many cases, technology experts and others have been able to link I.P. addresses to individuals using other records of their online activities.

The amount of data covered by the order is staggering, as it includes every video watched on YouTube since its founding in 2005. In April alone, 82 million people in the United States watched 4.1 billion clips there, according to comScore. Some experts say virtually every Internet user has visited YouTube.

Google and Viacom said they had had discussions about ways to further protect users’ anonymity, but as of Thursday evening the two companies had yet to agree on how to do that.

“We are investigating techniques, including anonymization, to enhance the security of information that will be produced,” said Michael D. Fricklas, Viacom’s general counsel.

Mr. Fricklas said Viacom would not have direct access to the data, and that its use would be strictly limited by the court order. Viacom would not, for example, chase down users who had illegally posted clips from “The Colbert Report.”

“The information that is produced by Google is going to be limited to outside advisers who can use it solely for the purpose of enforcing our rights against YouTube and Google,” Mr. Fricklas said.

In a letter sent Thursday, Google’s lawyers pressed their counterparts at Viacom to accept a more limited set of data. “We request that plaintiffs agree that YouTube may redact user names and I.P. addresses from the viewing data in the interests of protecting user privacy,” wrote David H. Kramer, a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

In a response, a Viacom lawyer wrote that Viacom was “committed to working with Google” on the privacy issue.

Interestingly, Google has rejected demands by privacy groups for more stringent protections for I.P. address records, saying that in most cases the addresses cannot be used to identify users. Yet Google argued that YouTube viewing data should be kept from Viacom, in part, to protect the privacy of its users.

Judge Louis L. Stanton of the Southern District of New York, who is presiding over Viacom’s lawsuit against Google and YouTube, referenced Google’s past statements on I.P. addresses to conclude that its “privacy concerns are speculative.”

“It is an ‘I told you so’ moment,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group in Washington.

Other privacy advocates said they welcomed Viacom’s commitment to limit its use of the information, but they remained concerned about user rights.

“Users should have the right to challenge and contest the production of this deeply private information,” said Kurt Opsahl, senior staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online civil liberties group.

That right is protected by the federal Video Privacy Protection Act, Mr. Opsahl added. Congress passed that law in 1988 to protect video rental records, after a newspaper disclosed the rental habits of Robert H. Bork, then a Supreme Court nominee.

Mr. Opsahl also said that even records that did not include a user’s login name and I.P. address might be able to be associated with specific people.

In 2006, after AOL released for research purposes the search records of thousands of anonymous users, reporters from The New York Times were able to track down one person by analyzing her search queries. Mr. Opsahl said anonymous viewing habits may similarly yield clues about the identity of viewers.

Viacom wants the viewing data in part to help it determine the extent to which YouTube’s success was built on the popularity of copyrighted clips that were illegally posted to the site. Outside experts say that without the data it would be virtually impossible to pin that down.

Judge Stanton agreed that the information could help Viacom make its case. “A markedly higher proportion of infringing-video watching may bear on plaintiff’s vicarious liability claim, and defendants’ substantial noninfringing use defense,” he wrote.

[wtm442]

Viacom wants the viewing data in part to help it determine the extent to which YouTube’s success was built on the popularity of copyrighted clips that were illegally posted to the site. Outside experts say that without the data it would be virtually impossible to pin that down.

Its too bad the judge was swayed by the above arguement. If I had been the judge, I would have told Viacom that if they wanted to pin down who posted copyrighted material (and how much), that they could just go look thru all of the videos posted on YouTube, and get that info themselves.

If anyone thinks they have ANY privacy rights on the INTERNET, they are fools. Its too bad, but that's the way it is today. If you don't like something, sue the bastards!

[Ron61]

A month or so ago I received a check in the mail from Viacom for $13.37 as my part of some settlement they had been sued for in 1998 I believe it was. I knew nothing about any of it and Viacom sold out up here way back about 2000. And I left the cable and went to satellite around 2001. So maybe they are trying to get back some of whatever they lost in that lawsuit. Anyway, if anyone thinks anything they put on a computer or say on any telephone is secure, they are living in a fantasy world. I just go by the rule to never say anything on a phone or put anything on my computer that I wouldn't want the world to know about.

Ron

[Ronbo]

Easy, google sends the records with randomly generated IP addresses...

Oh, sorry we run microsoft OS's...

[Don]

Can anyone clarify as correct or ?

Dial-up: The IP address is terminated when disconnecting and a new randomly assigned IP address is assigned when connecting the next time dial up is used

DSL: The IP address remains with the user unless the user signs off and disconnects from the internet service provider or re-starts the system ? Placing the PC into a sleep mode does not disconnect from the ISP and the IP address remains the same each time the internet is used ?

Or, is there another approach to changing the user's IP address with either dial up or DSL ?

[computerworks]

Originally Posted by Don

Can anyone clarify as correct

That's basically correct. Here's a very simplified explanation:

In order for any network of computers to function, each computer needs a unique address to participate.

Since the Internet is a global network, every single connection needs a unique Internet Protocol (IP) address.

Your address can be one of two types: static or dynamic.

Static never changes and is always the same value; this is what we need for servers, for example, so that when you ask for Club Cobra, it will always translate into a fixed address.

Dynamic can change. It is a temporary address for your present session.

The folks that you pay for internet access (your ISP) hook you up to the global network. Each ISP owns a block of addresses; when you connect to them, they assign an IP address to your computer for the session.

This is done by Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP). Basically, in a handshake, your PC says "gimme a number" and they respond with an assignment.

You don't own the number forever... it is given to you on a lease, which has an expiration date.

On a dial-up, you are assigned a number from the pool for your current session, and it goes back into the pool when you hang-up.

On a broadband (DSL, Cable, Fiber) connection, you are assigned a number when you connect thru your broadband modem and that number remains with you as long as the cable modem is talking to the ISP. The IP you get has a lease, with the term of days, so most of the time you will have the same IP with a broadband connection as long as your modem stays connected, which is usually full time.

If you, say, go on vacation for a week and shut all your gear off... when you come back and reconnect thru broadband, you may get a new IP address. Otherwise, shutting off at night and turning back on in the morning will keep you with the same IP, since your off-time is well within the terms of the lease.

With system commands on your PC, you can release and renew your IP, that is, turning in a number and going back to the fishbowl to pick a new one...but most ISPs will just give you the same number back, since the lease is still active.

[Don]

Ron..........thanks for IP Address 101, heard a number of stories on how IP addresses are assigned/maintained, but did not know for sure the correct version.

[Ronbo]

However the ISP's also are required to keep logs of IP address assignments.

So even if your using dynamic address assignment it's traceable to the user account. I don't know how long they're required to keep the logs though.

I imagine this is just to start a flurry of copyright lawsuits...

[Don]

The Court order article mentions only Google, no mention of the other 35 %, unless the others have complied voluntarily or had previously received the Court order:

January 2, 2008 11:31 AM PST
Google's market share tops 65 percent
Posted by Matt Asay

Google may not have monopoly power, but it certainly has monopoly mind share. As The New York Times reports, Google's search market share has jumped from 58 percent in March 2006 to 65.1 percent today. Yahoo? Less than one-third of Google's share. Microsoft? Less than one-ninth.

Monopoly? Not in the ordinary sense of the word. Google may well be aiming for a data monopoly to keep us close forever and ever, but for now it just has a brand monopoly that keeps users on its site, feeding it ever-increasing mountains of data.

We are feeding the beast, in other words. Whether it turns out to be a benevolent or malignant beast, however, is out of our hands. An interesting quagmir