Viacom

It amazed me a few weeks ago when a federal judge ruled that Google had to turn over the viewer logs for YouTube to Viacom, in Viacom's lawsuit. I read a lot of blogs that quickly blasted the decision as an invasion of privacy. It looks like they were following the tinfoil hat committee:

Google and Viacom have reached a deal to protect the privacy of millions of YouTube watchers.

Earlier this month, a New York federal judge ordered Google to turn over YouTube user data to Viacom and other plaintiffs to help them prepare a confidential study of what they argue are vast piracy violations on the video-sharing site.

Google claims it had now agreed to provide plaintiffs' attorneys with a version of a massive viewership database that blanks out YouTube usernames and IP addresses that could be used to identify individual video watchers.

Now I am not a lawyer, but this makes perfect sense. Viacom never planned on going after the millions of people who may have seen their content on YouTube. Think about it for a second - if they did these people have the ability to really hurt Viacom by simply turning off Comedy Central, not going to movies by Paramount, or boycotting any other product Viacom offers. Instead the decision was made so that Viacom could prove that people were using YouTube to watch the videos. It's part of the chain of evidence, and the ruling makes perfect sense.

Back to the bloggers for a minute. There are some on the left that really got to me. They were so quick to denounce this lawsuit and blast Viacom openly. Some of these bloggers are the very same that will fire off a nasty email to other bloggers when they feel like their content has been used without attribution. It's amazing how they love to apply double standards on this stuff.

I certainly hope not, but this lawsuit doesn't look good:

A one billion dollar lawsuit against YouTube threatens internet freedom, according to its owner Google.

Google's claim follows Viacom's move to sue the video sharing service for its inability to keep copyrighted material off its site.

Viacom says it has identified 150,000 unauthorised clips on YouTube.

In court documents Google's lawyers say the action "threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information" over the web.

The copyright battle has become insane. We really need better laws protecting the rights of the people making the material, but also laying out a clear path when that information can be shared.

For example. This year we have seen numerous times that debates have been aired and the network airing it has said "no distributing clips of it". Something involving our political process and the direction of our country should be considered public service and not fall under any restrictions. All but 2 debates aired only on cable networks, so what about the people without cable? It's not fair that they miss out on political discussion that could affect their future.

News items should also be the same. The public has a right to know what's going on, and not everyone can be in front of a television 24/7 or watch all the different networks. Public knowledge is a bedrock of democracy, and if we don't have it then our democracy suffers.

Here's another example of this from the article:

The company says the infringement also included the documentary An Inconvenient Truth which had been viewed "an astounding 1.5 billion times".

So was An Inconvenient Truth only a money machine for them? Do they not believe in the message that came from the documentary? I would think any earth conscious person or company would be thrilled to see that so many are watching this.

Perhaps Al Gore needs to chime in and help get us legislation that protects everyone, but mostly protects the people of this country and their deserved knowledge.