NEW YORK, NY — YouTube will mask users’ personally identifying details before handing over viewership data to Viacom per a July 1 court order. User IDs, internet protocol addresses and other identifiers will be obscured under an agreement the parties signed on Monday.The data is sought as evidence in Viacom’s $1 billion copyright-infringement lawsuit against the Google-owned video-sharing website. The court’s decision to grant Viacom’s request that YouTube be required to provide the data has been criticized soundly by privacy advocates.
Viacom had said it needs the data in order to show pirated clips from Viacom-owned properties like Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob SquarePants are more popular than amateur clips uploaded to YouTube by their creators. Viacom argues in its suit that complicity in copyright infringement is at the core of YouTube’s business model.
YouTube fought the request to provide complete website user logs because it says turning over such information to a third party violates the rights of YouTube viewers to remain anonymous. While IP addresses may not always be tracked to a specific individual, they can pinpoint a user’s general location down to the city block or building.
Although the agreement allows YouTube to substitute randomized information for the disputed identifiers, the records still must allow Viacom to determine which users watched which clips how often and when. It is likely any data provided will be released only under a court-sanctioned confidentiality order so as to prevent public revelation of the material.
YouTube also must provide viewership records for its employees, and whether that information may be obfuscated remains in dispute. Viacom has argued that if YouTube employees watched pirated videos on the site, it stands to reason YouTube was aware the material existed. A ruling in Viacom’s favor on that aspect of the data could revolutionize the way internet service providers who host user-submitted content are viewed under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Currently, they bear no responsibility for users’ uploads as long as they respond promptly to take-down notices from copyright owners and do not manipulate the submitted material in any way.
The judge’s initial ruling precipitated an outcry among cybercitizens who feared Viacom, if allowed to view the YouTube data without redactions, would use the personally identifiable information to sue individual users. Viacom hastily withdrew from its demands for complete datasets with the notation that it did not desire and never requested complete data. Court records do not bear out that defense. Viacom also promised it would protect any personally identifiable information YouTube provided.
