YouTube Responds to Viacom
July 4, 2008 by Mike Abundo
Filed under Computers
Viacom claims they need your personal YouTube information, purportedly to prove their claim that most YouTube views came from Viacom content. The latter claim is patently ridiculous, and so is the former.
Viacom obviously does not need your personal YouTube info to prove its purported point. They can use your personal information, however, to sue you. Viacom knows it, YouTube knows it, and people know it. Judge Louis Stanton, who ruled in favor of Viacom violating your privacy, either doesn’t know or doesn’t care. That’s why YouTube’s lawyers are asking Viacom’s lawyers that any data YouTube gives Viacom be anonymized first.
“Of course, we have to follow legal process. But since IP addresses and usernames aren’t necessary to determine general viewing practices, our lawyers have asked their lawyers to let us remove that information before we hand over the data they’re seeking,” says YouTube on their blog.
I doubt Viacom’s lawyers will grant that request so easily. Viacom Chairman Sumner Redstone and Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman both show little regard for customers. They would love to make an example out of you.
This is a complete invasion of privacy on the part of Viacom and our user information doesn’t have any relevance to their billion dollar lawsuit against Google. Google should be able to anatomize the user information before handing over 12 terabytes of personal information so my privacy and the privacy of millions like me are protected. I have a campaign that will force Viacom to allow Google/YouTube to protect us or 100,000 will boycott Viacom and all its subsidiaries: https://www.thepoint.com/campaigns/stop-viacom-from-invading-our-you-tube-privacy