… has ordered Google to turn over to Viacom a database linking users of YouTube, the Web’s largest video site by far, with every clip they have watched there.
[…]
For every video on YouTube, the judge required Google to turn over to Viacom the login name of every user who watched it, and the address of their computer, known as an I.P., or Internet protocol, address. Both companies have argued that such data cannot be used to unmask the identities of individual users with certainty. But in many cases, technology experts and others have been able to link I.P. addresses to individuals using records of their online activities.
More here – Viacom loses legal bid to review Google’s computer search code.
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I guess the Internet now has too go underground. We now live in a communist multicultural PC world. This is just another assault on the web. They (the government)wants this medium under its thumb. To much knowledge to the masses is dangerous to these control freaks.
In the end servers will not be in Countries but off shore to protect there customers. Than it will become truly international, as more Nations try to curtail web use while the businesses leave to the pirate stations. The ad companies will follow.
I predict a complete melt down by every Nation on the globe to shut this medium up with out going back to the stone age. How could I say this. Well China & Russia have failed miserably trying to control content.
By the way this is bogus spinning. South park allows its cartoons online for free. The only real uptight jerks are the music middle men who can’t leech of musicians anymore.Like artists used to say. I have a big mansion but the biggest are the ones on the hill owned by record company execs, Who are bitterly trying to regain a monopoly. Mean whikle film companies have gotten smart. The film goes almost immediatly to DVD with special perks.
Already I am having to go buy a Ghost program that will not give out an IP address or a fake one.I use it to watch free tv shows you can in the States but not Soviet Canada.
Boycott all things of Viacom! Hit them in the pocket book till it hurts.
I may have used YouTube to watch Daily Show and Colbert report clips when traveling. I may not have. Not saying either way but if I did, my IP address on such hypothetical occasions would be the hotels where I was staying. Hmmmm, that will help Viacom a lot.
So, does this mean that our activist judges in Canada will be asking SDA and other blogs to furnish their users’ login names and the addresses of their computers?
This is getting Kafka-esque, isn’t it? Or Orwellian. Or Alice-in-Wonderlandish. Or just plain Outlandish.
So much for the True North, Strong and Free and the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave…
Frankly, there was more freedom when both countries had a goodly number of their citizens going to church every Sunday–that is, when the majority of their citizens were professing, practising Christians.
Revnant Dream: Soviet Canada (Soviet U.S.A.?): touché!
This sort of “detective work” is about as accurate as looking up the owner of a firearm in the gun registry after that weapon has been used to commit a crime. Literally, an equivalent situation would be one wherein a police officer recovers a rifle from the scene of a crime, looks up the owner in the gun registry, and arrests that person, and takes them to court where they are convicted.
It’s completely circumstantial and proves absolutely nothing. Now, as to regulating who uses your computer since your IP address is your responsibility, that’s introducing a whole range of “due diligence” to owning a computer and an internet connection. If this were the case, you’d be responsible for the following:
Setting up your wireless router to not only have a MAC mask set up to filter anyone you haven’t entered, but also using the latest encryption being offered on that router (which would mean using windows updates on a regular basis so as to use said encryption, as well as buying new routers every so often just to ensure yours doesn’t get cracked). If you were not that diligent, your neighbors could easily use your internet connection to browse youtube video’s under your IP.
Another bit of due diligence is not leaving your computer unattended while having any guests over, or ensuring that you have proper login and passwords, and/or supervising someone when they are using your computer, or if they’re over with their own laptop, you’d need to watch them to ensure they don’t download or view infringing content.
The list goes on and on…long story short is that IP Addresses are completely useless when it comes to identifying people. And if the U.S. justice system continues to allow IP addresses to be direct evidence, people will simply start buying dynamic IP’s to circumvent said evidence.
…this is news? They can find my surfing habits by packet sniffing SDA…
Anonymizer is your friend.
http://www.anonymizer.com/
Don’t leave home without it.
be afwaid, be vewy afwaid….
Are the servers even supposed to log activity? I don’t!
What are they going to do, sue everyone that watched a video?
This is a joke/intimidation PR tactic courtesy of the DMCA thugs.
people will simply start buying dynamic IP’s to circumvent said evidence.
I just KNEW that dialup had its advantages.
Personally I don’t trust Google. While they may huff and puff over the judge’s order, they are not exactly believers in freedom themselves.
Well Now, if this had been Bush asking for this info all hell would have broke loose.
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Remember! The Horse’s name in Y2K may have been Reno