egafd.com

A court in America has ordered Google owner of Youtube to hand over details of every single vid it's ever had on it's site and details of all those who have watched them to American media giant Viacom....?????
Does this mean that anyone who's watched something on Youtube is now to become a criminal?????
and what about privacy laws?????

Google is apparently going to request that they can "anonymise" the information before they hand it over.

Lets hope they do.....I just don't like the idea that information about my internet usage can be handed over without my consent or right to challenge it...

Even though they know the IP address of everyone who watches a video, they couldn't hand over personal details because they wouldn't know them.

"What the fuck for .... ?" was my immediate reaction.

- Eric

And in other related news Virgin Media have sent out some 800 letters to their customers warning them to stop downloading copyrighted music ... looks like a lot of other ISP's will be forced into doing the same soon.

It started a year ago and still has at least another to go

CNET News.com reported that Viacom is under strict instructions from the court not to use the data for anything other than proving the prevalence of infringement on YouTube.

The case is important to Internet users because it could help define the scope of the safe harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That's the part of copyright law that Google and other Internet service providers claim protects them from being held responsible for the actions of their users.

Don't look for the case to get to court anytime soon. The discovery part of the case isn't expected to end until sometime next year

What has anyone got to hide using youtube. Its not like its a place where you can get loads of free hardcore porn.

I imagine you are all nothing but a statistic in their use of this information.