Privacy havoc looms

It’s no secret that Viacom is at odds with YouTube and its owners at Google. And it’s no secret that the former has slapped the latter with a 1 billion dollar lawsuit for infringement of copyright in videos posted to the site.

However, its somewhat of a surprise to me that a court ruling has now demanded that YouTube turn over all its end user logs with profiles and IP-adresses for scrutiny by Viacom in effect killing user privacy with the worlds defacto video search engine.

A lot of issues come to mind in this one. But lets look at a few which it will be interesting to follow, as this case move along:

1. Where is the legal boundary? Is it the person uploading the video, the person viewing it or both who’s responsible for the infringement? From the ruling this seems undecided.
2. What will Google’s position be? Will it come to the aid of its users or abstain?
3. Will it even be possible for Viacom to make sense of ALL the user and usage data from YouTube? I mean, this is a lot of data…
4. What will the backlash be for the parties concerned, specifically Viacom which is unlikely go gain any fans from this, if they pursue it in detail?
5. What will this do to overall internet privacy? Will we be bombarded back to the time when most people were afraid to share anything? Or is this going to blow over as an isolated incident?
6. Will the ordered sharing of user data prompt bogus suits in order to obtain data from other massive holders of same, aka MySpace, Facebook etc.?

Lots of issues here. It could all still blow over. But it could turn pretty nasty too. I for one am not placing any bets one way or the other at this point in time.

Vad NU! is a consultancy company owned by Mads Kristensen and specialized in helping clients take advantage of the business opportunities created by new media. Click to learn how I can help you and your company.