World

YouTube Must Release User Details

by flight737 | July 3, 2008 at 11:07 am

124 views | 2 Recommendations | 2 comments

Do you think all the funny videos you watch on Youtube are totally free? Well think again because you are about to pay with your user data. A court in US has ordered Google to hand over details of the viewing habits of You Tube users so if you own a youtube account you could be among the lucky ones.

It comes in a copyright infringement case brought last year by Viacom which filed a $1bn lawsuit against the Google-owned video-sharing site.

Viacom, which owns MTV, Paramount Pictures and VH1 among others, demanded Google should hand over information about how people use the site.

It argued that the data would show that copyright-protected material was routinely posted and watched.

Viacom claimed that YouTube willfully infringed its copyright by letting users post clips without permission.

It also wants the data to prove that copyrighted "stolen" material is more popular among YouTube visitors than original "user-generated" material.

A federal judge has now ordered Google to divulge details of every video clip uploaded to the site, along with viewers' YouTube usernames and IP addresses.