U.S. PIRG Consumer Blog: Privacy threatened by judge's court order in Youtube copyright case

Papers reported widely this week on a federal judge's decision ordering Google (owner of Youtube) to give the TV network Viacom "its records of which users watched which videos on YouTube, the Web’s largest video site by far." Google Told to Turn Over User Data of YouTube by Miguel Helft in the New York Times, Anick Jesdanun in the Associated Press, and Slashdot. In the case, Viacom is asserting broad rights to protect its copyrighted broadcast materials that may have been posted as clips on Youtube. While both companies claimed they would devise ways to anonymize data and protect consumer privacy, the order raises a variety of questions for consumer and privacy advocates and civil libertarians, not the least of which, to me, is the overarching question: have the courts and Congress gone too far in protecting the rights of intellectual property holders without considering those of consumers?

Among the questions raised in the Times' and other stories:

Does the order comply with the federal Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988's privacy rights provisions? The law was passed at lightspeed by Congress after an enterprising reporter for the Washington (DC) City Paper obtained and published video rental records of Supreme Court nominee Judge Robert Bork. From NYT:

"Users should have the right [under Bork law] to challenge and contest the production of this deeply private information," said Kurt Opsahl, senior staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online civil liberties group."

Question: Is Google talking out of both sides of its mouth when it demanded that most information, including IP addresses, be withheld to protect its customers' privacy? From NYT:

Interestingly, Google has rejected demands by privacy groups for more stringent protections for I.P. address records, saying that in most cases the addresses cannot be used to identify users.

But as the NYT story goes on to point out, IP addresses have been reverse-engineered or de-anonymized in the past, leaving user privacy at risk: From NYT:

Both companies have argued that I.P. addresses alone cannot be used to unmask the identities of individuals with certainty. But in many cases, technology experts and others have been able to link I.P. addresses to individuals using other records of their online activities.[...] Mr. Opsahl also said that even records that did not include a user’s login name and I.P. address might be able to be associated with specific people. In 2006, after AOL released for research purposes the search records of thousands of anonymous users, reporters from The New York Times were able to track down one person by analyzing her search queries. Mr. Opsahl said anonymous viewing habits may similarly yield clues about the identity of viewers.

I said above I was generally troubled by court decisions and laws that overly favor rights-holders over individuals. For more on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), fair use, privacy and other related issues, see the websites of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (post by Keith Opsahl), the Electronic Privacy Information Center and of the ChillingEffects.org clearinghouse. It's a joint project of EFF and several law schools. Also this week, Google finally added a privacy policy link to its home page (LATimes Blogs).

Update: This Center for Digital Democracy blog by Jeff Chester discusses other undiscussed issues in the Google/Viacom story. At Google,

"They now call YouTube a "next-generation advertising platform," something we think reflects how they really view the service. Google is pitching the branding and sellling of YouTube to advertisers. Google is now tracking YouTube views as it promotes to advertisers a scheme to take advantage of the "viral" marketing capabilities of YouTube."

Also, this Huffington Post blog entitled A few Important Stories That Are Not News (in the US) by Jamie Love of Knowledge Ecology International discusses some international intellectual property issues of note.

"ACTA: Japan, the US and the European Union are holding secret negotiations on a new intellectual property right enforcement treaty, misleadingly named the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. This negotiation is making headlines in Canada and is reported in Europe, but not by the US newspapers and wire services."