Folks,

You are all missing out on a key element of defense that the newly enlightened Google could (and probably should) use to quash most of this data fiasco.

In their line of business, Google has gained a greater position of metering than the Neilsen (sp?) Ratings system. Since those ratings are available in aggregated format for a sizeable fee, being forced to freely provide the data in question could easily be shown as economically biased and only intended to deprive Google of appropriate data access fees.

See, Neilsen could quite easily demonstrate the mediums' weight (Viacom intellectual property (IP) v. general populace IP), since this is actually one of their measurable formats (video).

Similarly, Gallop is in the business of conducted authoritative 'data mining operations' using the poll. Their organization could easily select at random (double-blind verified) three groups of poll takers numbering approx. 1500 each. Each group would be presented with questions pertaining to their own online video viewing habits. The people claiming they do not watch videos online would be removed from the sample, as they do not represent the group being measured. The separate results of the poll groups would be used to validate each other against biases. If a standard deviation greater than, for example, 7 is encountered, the poll is to be re-administered from scratch.

So, as you can see, Google can quite easily prove that Viacom has self-serving ulterior motives for desiring the data, and can counter for financial duress as a result of the disenfranchising actions of the claimant. The problem in this situation is that Google is worth more on a daily basis than is Viacom ... limiting the size of the settlement in favor of Google.

Explanatory Sidebar: Google is a cash kinda company, whereas Viacom is a credit kinda company... and debts mean less value as they not only eat assets on a 1:1 basis, but interest makes it a slow downward spiral -- unless you are the issuing bank using credit to loan cash at a greater rate.

As far as IP goes, anybody publishing materials onto the internet holds a copyright on their data, including an exclusive rights license. Now, since Google not only directly scrapes the internet for data to display, they also pull data from other smaller search engines.

The problem: not all of the search engines in question observe the Robots.txt file - meaning you are denied the right to keep your data exclusively on your own site. Now, since Google displays your content (any amount is still a copyright violation) in conjunction with their own for-profit ads, they can be sued for $$$$$ by individuals who have had their own IP rights violated. Any they are supposed to worry about debt-laden Viacom-munist?

Since copyright violation is a Federal offense, any person or group of people (company included) in any way associated with the act, can be held liable, regardless of their pleas for immunity (ISPs included), as they have aided and abetted a felonious act which current technology can be easily shown to eradicate and/or prevent when exercising due diligence (in this case there is a grossly contemptuous neglect of responsibility as required for the immunities to be assigned). So, if Google goes down, the ISPs actually delivering the data can also be held responsible, since they permitted the whole data transfer to take place without so much as an attempt to validate the action as being legal.

If you are going to spout legalese folks, please be sure to use both sides of your mouth, as it is a two-way street. Google should count themselves fortunate at this point that they still have a couple of sound defensive counter claims at their disposal. The rest of the digital media organizations might want to clean up their records, too (ie. burn the dag records and fry the HDDs), as the implications coming are not going to be limited to simple user data.

Next comes the "scrapers" who profit from the works of others without permission (Google knows who they are, too, and that data is probably mixed into the fray). Similarly to those Niche Video Site Builder sites scraping video content onto their pages. Every one of those videos is a copyright violation, as my willful uploading to YouTube does not give every person accessing the videos a perpetual license to duplicate/display the data. It only gives YouTube the right to show the video- on YouTube.com, and not inside of some embed into an external domain, such as video.google.com.

~ T