A US court has forced Google to disclose the user details of
every viewer of its YouTube video site.
The ruling is a result of
Viacom's multibillion-dollar lawsuit against Google, which
alleges that YouTube has breached copyright rules on its video
content.
The court ruling has alarmed privacy campaigners. Google will
have to disclose the user log-in names and IP addresses of every
viewer who has ever watched content on the YouTube site.
This means even non-members of YouTube could be tracked by
Viacom, which says its copyrighted video content has been illegally
posted on the YouTube site.
Google says it has no real control over what is posted on
YouTube, although it often takes things off the site after
complaints.
The mammoth viewing database awarded to Viacom includes the
log-in ID of users, user IP addresses, and details of what they
have viewed.
To get a positive identification of each user, Viacom would need
the details of the ISP used by viewers, but it has not requested
these details and has not so far indicated that it is after anyone
but Google for allowing the copyrighted content to be posted.
Viacom owns MTV and Paramount Pictures, among other content
generators.
The UK Premier League is also seeking class action status with
Viacom on the issue. It says YouTube, which was bought by Google in
2006, has been used to watch copyrighted football highlights.
When Viacom initiated its legal action in March 2007, Viacom
said it had identified about 160,000 unauthorised clips of its
programmes on YouTube, which had been viewed more than 1.5 billion
times.
The court also ruled that Google must disclose to Viacom the
details of all videos that have been removed from the site for any
reason.
Viacom says Google is not doing enough to stop copyrighted
content appearing in the first place, although Google has recently
introduced some filtering controls.