A federal judge overseeing a $1 billion copyright-infringement lawsuit against YouTube has ordered the online video sharing site to disclose who watches which clips and when.
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That could allow Viacom to identify the videos viewed by the site's users, and potentially, in some cases, the computers on which they were viewed.
In a statement, Google said it was "disappointed the court granted Viacom's overreaching demand for viewing history. We are asking Viacom to respect users' privacy and allow us to anonymize the logs before producing them under the court's order."
The judge's decision was immediately criticized by advocates of online privacy. "The court's erroneous ruling is a setback to privacy rights, and will allow Viacom to see what you are watching on YouTube," wrote Kurt Opsahl, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online civil rights group.
Viacom said it isn't seeking any user's identity. The company said any data provided "will be used exclusively for the purpose of proving our case against YouTube and Google (and) will be handled subject to a court protective order and in a highly confidential manner."
Viacom, the owner of MTV and creator of the Daily Show and other television shows popular with online audiences, filed its $1bn claim against YouTube last year, alleging that the site did not do enough to prevent its users from viewing clips of its copyrighted material.
The judge denied Viacom's request that it be given access to YouTube's source code, arguing that granting an outside company access to the site's inner workings would compromise trade secrets.
