Viacom is concerned only with its own commerical properties, the uploading of which to such sites as You Tube is a clear violation of both licencing agreements and current copyright law.

The person who posesses a DVD or VHS tape does NOT "own" the movie; that person has only been granted very specific licence rights to THAT particular copy.

Little known and even less understood fact.

Even home-made videos, unless specifically stated to be public domain carry with them copyright by the creator.

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Jezz lets calm down so what Google have made money from copyright content (that's the issue here). Not if we watched it!

Viacom don't give a rats ass who watched it or even who uploaded it like they are going to sue millions of people most of whom couldn't pay a parking ticket let alone the legal bills. They are only interested in what they watched.

They like everyone else have realised that Youtube is a bigger barometer of what's popular than any survey.

Viacom might win the battle but will lose the war as Goggle has very deep pockets and the only winners will be the lawyers (sounds familure?) .

If this actually survives appeals (expect many). You tube will be shut as they would have to individually edit every clip put up now or in the past. If one frame is copyright then so is the whole bloody clip.

There is no way Viacom will win this as I believe your US laws prevent privacy violations more than any other country.

If Google are forced to reveal Isp and personal details (en block) and other details this will be the end of the internet as a free medium as no one will risk passing in their info to major corporations.

Next will be the P2P networks, then the search engines, then we go for the banner advertisers that make money from the illegal vids, then we get to several other major corporate layers before we get to Black Hatters loading vids they got from some where else anyways..... Sounds like the lawyers are going to be busy.

Thought this might also be interesting sorry its bit long winded

The Video Privacy Protection Act (18 U.S.C. 2710) was passed by Congress in the wake of the controversy that arose when Judge Robert Bork's video rental records were released during hearings into his Supreme Court nomination.

The Act forbids a video rental or sales outlet from disclosing information concerning what tapes a person borrows and buys, or releasing other personally identifiable information without the informed, written consent of the customer.

The Act also requires such outlets to provide consumers with the opportunity to opt out from any sale of mailing lists. The Video Privacy Act allows consumers to sue for damages if they are harmed by violations of the Act.

Release of video tape rental records of the type Judge Bork suffered probably comprises an invasion of privacy that a common law court would recognize as a tort if it happened to an ordinary consumer. Because Judge Bork was a public figure whose suitability for the Supreme Court was a hotly debated issue, release of his video rental records may have been protected by the First Amendment.

Because tort law already protected ordinary consumers, the Video Privacy Act created a new way to sue video rental outfits without improving the privacy of video rental information. When Congress voted on the law, they undoubtedly saw themselves in Judge Bork; they did little for consumers.

Point 1. Viacom HAVE won.
Point 2. Google have already said that they will NOT appeal.

It's already happening. ISP's in Europe are being warned that they will have to provide details of connections, customers, traffic content, etc. Why? The so-called 'fight against terrorism'.

Google, etc. already keep details of your search enquiries - so that they can target their ads at you. What happens when they are forced to hand over records? Because, you better believe it, at some point, someone is going to obtain such a ruling. It may be over something incredibly trivial - but it will happen.

The really scary shit is that because most of this stuff is headquartered in the US it means records of people from other countries - which the US has no legitimate right to - will be included.

And the chances are that most of this data has already been obtained by the (in)appropriate government departments anyway. Leaving aside any Black Hat activity I find that really worrying.

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

I just think its a load of bs!
You have less and less freedom in "western countries" then you have in communist countries (such as china).
Maybe thats why they are going to be the next superpowers because of the amount of bs lawsuits which is happening in US and Europe!
If you want freedom internet just go to China, yeah they montior and filter the internet but as long you keep investing the $ they dont care, so in effect yeah money talks!

What you said.

Excellent points!

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Yes I agree

Err...maybe I am side tracking here, but how does YouTube filter adult content, i.e. remove uploaded videos or prevent uploading of videos that have adult (or blatant porn) content?

I figure if someone complained about a video, sure, youtube admin would check and then remove it.

However, at the point of upload or shortly after, is there a way to filter or screen the video content for adult material (e.g. with a script of some sort of software program) ? Short of having a human reviewer look over each and every video as a content filter that is, which just doesn't seem practical or cost-effective.

Along the same lines, I wonder how it would be possible for YouTube to check for copyrighted material in each and every uploaded video WITHOUT a human reviewer?

Of course, "impractical" or "not cost effective" will not be a good defense in court, I suppose