Viacom lawsuit: Google told to hand over all YouTube user details

YouTube users to be revealed

The internet giant Google is being forced to hand over the personal information of every person who has ever watched a video on the YouTube website as part of a billion-dollar court case in the US.

A judge in New York has ordered that Google, which owns YouTube, must pass on the details of more than 100 million people - many of them in the UK - to Viacom, the US broadcasting company which owns channels including MTV and Nickelodeon.

The data will include unique internet addresses, email accounts and the history of every video watched on the website, giving Viacom's experts the ability to conduct a detailed examination of the viewing habits of millions of people around the world.

The decision is the latest twist in a long court battle between the two companies over claims that Google encourages copyright infringement on the video sharing website. Judge Louis Stanton, who is presiding over the $1bn lawsuit, said the data handover was required in order to allow Viacom to build its case.

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While information on who has watched YouTube's countless videos of sneezing pandas and laughing babies may seem trivial, civil liberties campaigners fear the ruling could set a precedent for the level of privacy afforded to people using the internet, and that internet companies could now be sued in order to get hold of sensitive personal data.

"The court's erroneous ruling is a setback to privacy rights," said Kurt Opsahl, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online civil liberties group based in San Francisco. "We urge Viacom to back off this overbroad request and Google to take all steps necessary to challenge this order and protect the rights of its users."

I don't know if any of you were following this case...I did not even know about it till I read this article.

It's not about kitties and children's videos, it's about how now people can be endangering their lives to publish controversial videos...from isolated nations or occupied territories. No privacy left.

All I can say is WOW, who is this judge?

Banned but hopefully not forgotten.