Happy Independence! This is one of those creepy techie developments that I wish our incredible Techsploitation columnist Annalee Newitz would sink her privacy-defending cyberteeth into, but alas, her column has ended this week.
Basically, as Machinist’s Farhad Manjoo reports (via Wired), in an ongoing copyright infringement case brought by Viacom against YouTube, a judge just yesterday ordered YouTube parent company Google to hand over “12 terabytes of logs (approximately 12,000 GB) [to Viacom] that detail each instance in which someone pressed Play on a YouTube video, plus the YouTube username of the viewer who watched it, the date and time at which the user pressed Play, and the IP address of the viewer’s computer. The database covers videos seen both on YouTube as well as those embedded on other pages: If you’ve never visited YouTube but have clicked on a YouTube video from your daily newspaper’s Web site, you’re in the database.”
Comedy Central knows you’ve watched Busty Heart crush a six-pack with her boobs!
Google Search Privacy: Plain and Simple
Viacom, idiotically, still wants to bust YouTube for transmitting copyrighted clips posted by users. “Idiotically,” I say, because if stoner/slackers didn’t put down their combo bong-remotes long enough to post “John Stewart” snippets to YouTube, I’d have absolutely no idea who the heck he was, except someone badly in need of a hairdresser.
I love Web 2.0! We’re all victims of our own pleasure. Next: US Government busts scruffy earnest dudes from Florida who trash Madonna melodically.