Viacom was awarded access to detailed Youtube user data including IP address, user ID’s and viewing records on 1st July 2008. Awarded by US Judge Louis Stanton, Viacom gained access to the viewing profiles of every Youtube user without restriction to those uploading or viewing the disputed copyright content
Viacom states it will not use this data to “enforce its rights against end users”.
Regardless of what Viacom says, the action of fighting for and winning access to innocent users viewing profiles scores a reputational own goal and threatens the online advertising industry by motivating anonymous web usage.
Winning the rights to all our user behavior but benevolently offering not to investigate each and every user is not a great way to win hearts and minds.
The reason Viacom demanded every user record is because they stated that they believe the vast majority of Youtube revenue is driven by Copyright infringement. By arguing this point, one may believe Viacom are suggesting the vast majority of Youtube users are guilty of copyright infringement.
Let’s look at the offline equivalent of what has occurred in Judge Stanton’s ruling. What Viacom have pursued and won is equivalent to:
A DVD rental store gets sued for renting a counterfeit DVD. In order to prove this film was responsible for the majority of the DVD store’s profits, the film studio win the right to every users account information regardless if they ever watched the pirate DVD.
A responsible judge would require the disclosure of the DVD companies full turnover, compare that to the financial value of all transactions including the bootleg DVD and make a financial ruling.
Not hand over every users viewing history.
Rewarding Viacom’s fishing trip may have created a precedent they Viacom themselves regret. As a content owner and advertising powered business they could fall victim to their own legal precedent.
Let’s say a copyright infringed article appeared on Viacom’s Parent’s Connect http://www.parentsconnect.com
The infringed publisher could now theoretically demand the behavior profiles of every user regardless of content consumed, courtesy of Viacom v Youtube.
How would Viacom communicate to their users that children’s user histories are now court record and being poured through by numerous short term hired guns from the IT consultancy industry who may subcontract to companies with no employee criminal record checks.
Take a health portal, is every teen pregnancy, HIV symptoms or depression management article view and associated IP address available to Joe Litigious should the health portal publisher accidently post copyrighted medical information. What if the lawyers who win access to the data also work for your health insurance provider?
This is not bootleg Comedy Central, these are the core issues users feel very passionate about, no laughing matter.
User’s most private browsing could become public record or at least end up on machines across a wide range of forensic web consultancies and legal companies with varying degrees of security, competency and intentions.
Regardless of how secure the information is, a core trust has been broken. Users gave their trust to one company and now it’s literally sworn rivals have open access to data entrusted to the original organization.
As for tracing users, once you have the IP address and access times, the next step is to file a successful action against the ISP and should that user IP resolve to a domestic connection it gets very personal very quickly.
All my web usage today was through a GPRS card and each connection used a dynamically assigned IP address that will vary but time is neatly tied to my data cards phone number and time of usage. In my case this means I’m tracked to what I am doing within about 70 ft and naturally my billing address.
For a home connection, it’s to your front door.
Users logged to sites with their names and personal date such as email addresses will have even less anonymity. No need to contact the telco (who may be the same company as the litigant), just email the user and if they do not reply, proceed with action to gain their real identify.
Those who use their name or an ID common to their social networking profile have virtually no anonymity at all. Expect a call at work.
But hey, if you have done nothing wrong, you don’t need to worry?
Well, perhaps. But as you read this, a very sharp lawyer is working out the myriad of ways to use this precedent to open up data that we can only guess the nature of.
But forget the average user, as Judge Stanton has, lets look how commercially damaging this could be for online advertising revenues.
Overnight a rival obtains detailed demographic and behavioral data “accidentally created” whilst in the course of a legal investigation because of 12 Tb of network data they can demand to profile every transaction.
The secret sauce of advertising networks is open to be reverse engineered to the glee of lazy advertisers everywhere.
The overall effect may be a growth in online users obscuring their online usage via the many tools and services available or simply choosing to browse as guests rather than logging in and ramping up browser anonymity such as rejecting cookies and using VPNs.
The net effect is all these actions drive down the % accuracy of online behavioral and demographic targeting which are exactly what media owners such as Viacom and online advertising providers such as Google rely upon to justify their advertising models.
