YouTube Ruling a Yahoo Decision
Sunday, July 6, 2008 at 21:10
Posted by Marcel Strigberger
A U.S. District Court ordered Google to turn over zillions of bits of data detailing the personal video habits of YouTube watchers, to Viacom Inc. Viacom is suing Google for allegedly unlawfully posting copyrighted material such as South Park clips, on YouTube and it plans to use this data against Google in its billion dollar claim.
Needless to say, privacy advocates everywhere have their knickers in a knot as supposedly Viacom can conceivably glean previously unknown information from this data and use it to the detriment of YouTube users, myself included.
Though not a frequent YouTube visitor, I have surfed the site occasionally and picked up some important skills. For example, I watched a segment that taught me how to successfully complete a Rubik’s cube in seconds. My plan was to casually walk over to unsuspecting puzzle geeks and pretend I know nothing about the Rubik’s cube and gain their confidence. Then, just like Paul Newman in The Hustler, I would get them to bet large sums of money on me taking two hours to complete the cube. I would then shock them all by doing it as per the YouTube video and voilà, I’d clean up.
Now there is a good chance my cover is blown. I can just see Viacom going through 12 tetra bytes of memory cards and some drone in San Jose, California says, “Hey, here’s one. Put a warning out to Rubik’s cube users in the Greater Toronto Area to be on the lookout for Marcel Strigberger. He knows the secret trick, where you twist the top reds just after the middle greens.”
This ruling could be costly. I’d say the potential abuse of this decision can affect most YouTube users big time, with the consequent invasion of our privacy causing us all gargantuan damages. In fact I see a class action happening against Viacom. They have opened a Pandora’s box. I hereby put Viacom on notice of my potential claim and ask them to leave me alone. And I don’t even like South Park.
Needless to say, privacy advocates everywhere have their knickers in a knot as supposedly Viacom can conceivably glean previously unknown information from this data and use it to the detriment of YouTube users, myself included.
Though not a frequent YouTube visitor, I have surfed the site occasionally and picked up some important skills. For example, I watched a segment that taught me how to successfully complete a Rubik’s cube in seconds. My plan was to casually walk over to unsuspecting puzzle geeks and pretend I know nothing about the Rubik’s cube and gain their confidence. Then, just like Paul Newman in The Hustler, I would get them to bet large sums of money on me taking two hours to complete the cube. I would then shock them all by doing it as per the YouTube video and voilà, I’d clean up.
Now there is a good chance my cover is blown. I can just see Viacom going through 12 tetra bytes of memory cards and some drone in San Jose, California says, “Hey, here’s one. Put a warning out to Rubik’s cube users in the Greater Toronto Area to be on the lookout for Marcel Strigberger. He knows the secret trick, where you twist the top reds just after the middle greens.”
This ruling could be costly. I’d say the potential abuse of this decision can affect most YouTube users big time, with the consequent invasion of our privacy causing us all gargantuan damages. In fact I see a class action happening against Viacom. They have opened a Pandora’s box. I hereby put Viacom on notice of my potential claim and ask them to leave me alone. And I don’t even like South Park.
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