Really, It's Research

Happy July 4.

Viacom has gotten a judge to give it access user data for everyone who has ever looked at video on YouTube as part of its $1 billion copyright suit against Google.

In other words, in between seeing what Daily Show or Beavis & Butt-Head clips I've looked at over the years, my friends at Viacom will also see how many times I typed in "girls kissing" into the search function. No, they won't have names, but they'll have IP addresses, which is just as good.

Of course, the legal debate over privacy is going to explode over this one. I'm not a privacy lawyer (yet, but I am thinking about it) and I'm not sure how I feel about this. I am enjoying that Google, which has in the past resisted concerns about privacy tried unsuccessfully to make a privacy argument against Viacom's motion.

Viacom, for what it is worth, says they aren't interested in hunting down the folks who looked at their content, but rather need the data to see overall what people look at on YouTube to determine how much copyrighted material played into the popularity of the site. That's code for YouTube is fucked. Without all the copyrighted material that YouTube has allowed users to post over years, the site would have never reached the heights it has. Yes, now original content can flourish there, but it took the use (illegal) of copyrighted content to put it on the map. It's no different then how every cable network gets going. First they buy reruns of popular shows and then when they start making money off of it, they create original programming. YouTube did the same thing. They just forgot the part about paying for the content.

YouTube and Google have always argued that when they are alerted to any copyright violations they immediately act. But see I don't think that argument washes. YouTube gets porn off there pretty quick and I'm guessing they do it without a legal letter from the general counsel of Evil Empire or Vivid. The YouTube defense is akin to me saying it is OK if I let people come over and put stolen goods on my lawn for anybody to take because technically I didn't steal it myself and I didn't know (wink) it was stolen. But if you come over and tell me that's your couch on my lawn, I'll gladly give it back to you. In other words, I'm with the old media giant vs. the new media giant in this one.

But this is all for another day. Right now I just want the folks at Viacom to know I was merely doing research on the levels of scintillating content on YouTube, that's all. Really. I'm serious.