You may have missed it, but over the 4th of July YouTube received a court order to hand over user viewing data from its database — including usernames and IP addresses — to Viacom in the ongoing $1 billion lawsuit against the video sharing service.
YouTube refused. Randy Picker at the University of Chicago Law Faculty Blog, and David Robinson at Freedom to Tinker considered the implications. Yesterday Google and Viacom reached an agreement.
The Google-Viacom showdown over the handover of YouTube user data appears to be over. The two sides agreed to changes in a previous ruling that would have required Google to hand over user id’s, IP addresses and a list of all viewed YouTube videos to Viacom in connection with their ongoing copyright infringement litigation.
After an online uprising against the order, Viacom tried to assert that they never requested personally identifiable information (they did), and later promised not to use the information to sue individuals. The value of that promise was questioned by us and many others.
Liz Gaines has this handy background on the latest skirmish:
First a federal judge ordered YouTube to hand over its user data to Viacom. Then Google asked to have user identifying information stripped out. Viacom denied it ever asked for that data (it did) and then said it didn’t want user information after all. Then it came out that Viacom wants YouTube employee user information. And now this latest order (which is on the YouTube blog already, but not the dedicated YouTube litigation section on Viacom’s site).
She notes that order includes a paragraph about employee viewer data. CNet has more on that:
Last weekend, two sources with knowledge of the negotiations between the companies told CNET News that Google was refusing to hand over to Viacom information about what videos YouTube employees have watched or uploaded to the site.
The sources said that the information could help Viacom prove that YouTube has turned a blind eye to the piracy on its site. Google is also likely to ask to see similar records about Viacom’s employees. That might show that while Viacom’s lawyers were demanding YouTube to remove it’s videos, Viacom’s marketing managers may have been among those that posted them.
The case is not scheduled to go to court until next year at the earliest.
RELATED: The real YouTube story this week probably should be Project Spaghetti. The WSJ on Google’s problems selling ads on YouTube.