Re: This is BAD news -- Google Ordered to Turn Over YouTube User Data

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: Dan Brickley [danbri () danbri org]
Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2008 7:55 PM
To: David Farber
Subject: Re: [IP] Re:    This is BAD news -- Google Ordered to Turn Over YouTube User Data

Dave, IP if you like,

One aspect apparently missed from both the Judge's ruling and the EFF's
analysis, is the degree to which YouTube username IDs can be readily and
mechanically linked via other online profiles to real world identities.

Hyperlinks from other 'social Web' sites (eg. FriendFeed, MyBlogLog) to
YouTube profile pages, particularly those that use the XFN microformat
HTML idioms, or FOAF markup, make it easier to find the people behind
the account IDs. And this gets easier with every passing month as more
such links are made, and as those sites offer more machine-readable
profile data. Furthermore, the links needn't be made by the profile
owner; the association can be made by friends, fans, contacts and stalkers.

Google themselves have offered a Web service API to just such data,
harvested and indexed from the public Web (their 'social graph API')
since early this year, which will return other profile URLs when fed a
YouTube profile URL that has incoming links from a FOAF or XFN-enabled
site that describes the connection. FWIW I posted an example, details
and links earlier in http://danbri.org/words/2008/07/03/359

An interesting scenario to consider here would be if an "anonymous"
account on YouTube were revealed in this dataset as uploading
copyrighted content without approval, yet the account's buddylist had
IDs that were linked via cross-site hyperlinks to profiles of
identifiable people.

cheers,

Dan

  _______________________________________
> From: Michael R. Nelson [mnelson () pobox com]
> Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2008 3:20 PM
> To: David Farber
> Subject: Re: [IP] Re:   This is BAD news -- Google Ordered to Turn Over YouTube User Data
>
> Even though the decision will almost certainly appealed, the fact that a judge ruled for Viacom indicates how badly 
> we need to rationalize how copyright applies online.  It's frightening that the privacy rights of tens of millions of 
> YouTube users matter so little.
>
> If this decision stands, there would be nothing to prevent any content owner (in the US or elsewhere) from suing 
> Goggle and getting the data Viacom is demanding.
>
> Michael R. Nelson
> Visiting Professor, Internet Studies
> CCT Georgetown University
> Washington, DC
>
> David Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:

> http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/07/court-ruling-will-expose-viewing-habits-youtube-us



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