I wonder if they will be going after other video hosts. It seems pretty invasive to me. Here is the IP that was watching , and here is what they were watching. Hmmm? What to do with THAT information? John
"The viewing log, which will be handed to Viacom, contains the log-in ID of users, the computer IP address (online identifier) and video clip details" Essentially, a list of users and their IP addresses that have watched a certain video. How many of us watch Bill Owens's videos from mnpctech? Too bad Bill can't get that info, it would be great to approach a sponsor and say 30,023 page hits on my latest mod. Want me to build you one? OR 30,023 IP addresses from these users ALL watched an illegal copy of XYZ movie. Now the legal eagles have 30,023 people to "talk to" without having to do their own investigation. One sad, sorry state of affairs and I don't watch YouTube maybe once or twice a week. Now, I'm a statistic? John
Quick answer would be to analyze page hits and move most viewed to the top of search engine. Do you want to wade through everything on You Tube to find today's most popular? Ever have to wait for Bit-Tech.net to load while waiting for google-analytics? It's every where there is advertiser monies to be made. /Begin Rant The 30+ years in the computer industry paranoid bones in my body are tingling about possible abuse and litigation. You Tube is actually marked in some reports as the beginning of the Web 2.0 along with FaceBook and MySpace, all of which scare the heck out of the RIAA and the police communities. Toss up, free to post, or free to give up civil liberties. Web Services, where everything from bookmarks to documents is stored on some server somewhere? My personal medical information avail on the Web? My income info? Maybe George Orwell was closer to the truth than people think. It's not just the web either - I go into the grocery store and buy hamburger and the machines spit out coupons for dog and cat food. I have three dogs and three cats. Am I being "profiled" by my grocer? The web and personal information security has a long way to go to make me comfortable, in my antique opinion. Too many years with the US Department of Defense computers. DOD says only way to make a computer SECURE is not to connect it to ANY network. Sorry for my little rant! /end rant John
I'd love to know how they're even going to make any sense of it. 12 terabytes of info doesn't exactly just open up in an excel spreadsheet for some corporate tit to browse at his leisure. I don't really see it as much of a privacy invasion though, afterall Google have the info right now, and I don't think they live up to their "do no evil" mantra like they perhaps may have once done.
I think Viacom's is looking more for those that POSTED material, rather then those that watched it. And since YouTube doesn't host anything I would be embarrassed to be caught watching (well, some of the stuff is pretty stupid) I am not all that worried about it. Not to mention, that all my IP addresses have been outside the US for the last 5 years. I dare them to sort through the UAE's or South Africa's telcom system to find me for watching something on YouTube. But it is a worrying trend.
I expect they have teams of corporate tits to read it and go "WTF?!". Maybe serious numbers of brain hemorrhages will a occur.
It does occur to me that if the issue is whether YouTube violated copyrights on a massive scale by posting various clips on their site, the relevant information would be the clips themselves, not the posters' login IDs and IP addresses. Sounds to me as though this is an invasion of privacy and overreaching for the current lawsuit. Plus Viacom just got a crapload of discovery material for individual infringement lawsuits... All in all, it is quite worrisome. And I've never posted anything on YouTube.
i dont get what good this will do viacom.... surely they cant base ANY court cases on the information they have received can they?
Meh. They can't do anything with the information. I'm pretty sure you can't be arrested for watching a video on youtube regardless of its content.
hand it over, in one .rar file, split over as many 5,25" floppy disks will be required, dont label the disks and ship them with Citylink... Or, convert to binary, print it and tell them collect it.
