Friday, July 4th 2008
Do YouTube?
I do. A lot of people I know do.
Over the past twelve months however, it has become saturated with clips of television programmes from all corners of the globe – I go into the Automotive/Vehicles category and I find loads of Top Gear clips, moving over to music and I find thousands of clips from satellite music channels.
Whilst many programme makers and television channels have released the rights for this to take place, it would seem Viacom, which owns MTV and Paramount Pictures, has alleged that YouTube is guilty of massive copyright infringement.
The UK’s Premier League association is also seeking class action status with Viacom on the issue, alleging YouTube, which was bought by Google in 2006, has been used to watch football highlights.
So, according to US law, Google must divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched any video on YouTube.
That’s every IP address of every computer that has ever watched a video on YouTube!
Many privacy campaigners including the digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation called this ruling a ‘set-back to privacy rights’.
In a funny way I enjoy these fights between massive corporations, as one of several million YouTube users I don’t expect a man knocking at my door telling me off for watching a five minute Top Gear clip back in 2006!
I can only hope the court case between Google and Viacom is televised.
And that someone has the sense to upload it straight-away!
Posted by Richard on Friday 4th of July 2008 at 11:13am
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