Techotic

A federal judge has ordered Google to hand over to Viacom its records of which users watched which videos on YouTube.

The ruling raises concerns that the video viewing habits of tens of millions of Youtube users could be exposed. The large amount of users data they’re dealing with here is staggering — it includes every video watched on YouTube since its launched in 2005 and Google now has to to hand over to Viacom every login name and IP addresses of every user who had watched the video. Experts are saying that possibly every Internet user has watched a Youtube video.

Google and Viacom said they were hoping to come up with a way to protect the anonymity of the site’s visitors. Viacom also said that the information would be safeguarded by a protective order restricting access to the data to outside lawyers, who will use it solely to press Viacom’s $1 billion copyright suit against Google.

Still, the judge’s order, which was made public late Wednesday, renewed concerns among privacy advocates that Internet companies like Google are collecting unprecedented amounts of private information that could be misused or fall unexpectedly into the hands of third parties.

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. Yet Google argued that YouTube viewing data should be kept from Viacom, in part, to protect the privacy of its users.

[via new york times]