Google Ordered To Release User Logs
The urge to watch and share the latest funny clip from the Daily Show and other Viacom-owned subsidiaries has landed Google and its YouTube service in a lot of hot water as a judge has ordered the video-sharing service to turn over its logs.
In the Viacom v. Google case, filed last year, "logs" refers to "all data from the Logging database concerning each time a YouTube video has been viewed on the YouTube website or through embedding on a third-party website," explains the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The logs will contain the username of the YouTube user as well has the Internet protocol address of the computer watching each video.
Viacom is getting the logs as part of its ongoing copyright infringement suit against Google; whether it gets ongoing reports might depend on the outcome of the suit. The court denied Viacom's request for Google's proprietary search code.
The legal significance of this ruling disregards any kind of privacy precedence established by the Video Privacy Protection Act. The VPPA was established in 1988 after Robert Bork's video rental history was released while he was being consideredfor a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. The VPPA was covered VHS video tape rentals.
Now, while VHS video tapes are significantly different than digital video files watched on YouTube, the same concept applies. It's all about privacy. With the information that the court ordered Google to disclose, Viacom gets information that may identify everybody who's ever watched a Viacom video on YouTube, which would include anything from Comedy Central, MTV and more.
For safety reasons, until this mess gets sorted out you're better off going to Hulu for your daily dose of truthiness.
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It seems more and more companies are not respecting the privacy of their users. Just last week I read about another popular social networking site releasing private information to marketing companies. I recommend that anyone who cares about keeping their identity safe use a VPN service that conceals and encrypts your internet identity. We use LiteVPN's anonymous VPN service and we love it. You can go to http://LiteVPN.com for more information. I think it only a matter of time before none of our information stays private with internet companies like google.
I have two Hp Pavillon laptops, one running XP and the Other running Vista. My "New HP Photsmart A626 and my "New" HP Officejet 6310 run great on XP. But Vista and HP are a joke. neither will work correctly on vista and the HP tech help hasn't a clue that you can't fix the problem with compatability.
If anyone has a solution to HP compatability I would like to hear
lbchief, your comment doesn't really have anything to do with this article - it's about the Viacom vs. Google suit. I'd recommend you visit the PCW forums and find a suitable place to post your request, otherwise you won't get an answer.