What You Watched on YouTube

The tech blogosphere and privacy advocates are abuzz about a federal judge's order in the copyright dispute between YouTube and Viacom.

The judge, Louis Stanton of the Federal District Court in Manhattan, on Tuesday denied a request by Viacom that Google, the owner of YouTube, turn over the YouTube search source code.

But the judge did grant a request that YouTube turn over a logging data base on how often and who is watching a video.

The data includes YouTube user names, when a video was watched, and the user's internet protocol address.

Google, the judge said in his order, argued that that the data should not be disclosed because of the users' privacy concerns, saying that 'Plaintiffs would likely be able to determine the viewing and video uploading habits of YouTube's users based on the user's login ID and the user's IP address.' "

Tthe judge went on to say that "the defendants cite no authority barring them from disclosing such information in civil discovery proceedings, and their privacy concerns are speculative."

Privacy advocates were aghast at the order,

Kurt Opsahl of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that " The court's erroneous ruling is a setback to privacy rights, and will allow Viacom to see what you are watching on YouTube."

Stan Schroeder on Mashable took a more dire view: "Let me tell you, in the shortest possible terms, what this means. It means you. Unless you've been extra careful to only watch non-copyrighted videos on YouTube (yeah, right), Viacom could sue you. No, it's even worse: they could actually win."

The order was one skirmish in what may turn out to be the biggest and most important copyright battle ever.

As Matthew Malone and Andy Young wrote in Conde Nast Portfolio:

"The case will be a major test of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which protects online companies that carry copyrighted material posted by others. Viacom says YouTube doesn't qualify, because it actively participates in posting videos and it profits when users share them."