Viacom Amends Data Demands
A court ruling in early July 2008 stated that Google had to give Viacom the history of viewers on YouTube. It seems that Viacom has reversed its demands:
“Viacom has backed off a request to gain access to all YouTube user histories after public outcry over privacy concerns, according to a YouTube blog post.
“We are pleased to report that Viacom, MTV and other litigants have backed off their original demand for all users’ viewing histories and we will not be providing that information,” YouTube said in a statement.”
link: Viacom Decides It Doesn’t Need YouTube Histories
This is a small victory for privacy advocates. The user’s identifiers such as the IP address will be redacted. Nevertheless, this litigation between Viacom and YouTube, whose parent company is Google, raises the issues of these user data bases. Are these data bases absolutely necessary? Furthermore, if such data bases are maintained, how long should the information be kept?
With internet security and privacy issues becoming an matter of contention between technology companies and governments, it is incumbent upon organizations such as Google to state clearly how these data are to be used. To state that such disclosures infringe upon proprietary rights of the company simply leaves the site visitor guessing… and at risk.
Catherine Forsythe
Tags: court ruling, data base, Google, privacy, security, ViaCom, YouTube
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