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

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: Daniel Weitzner [djweitzner () csail mit edu]
Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2008 8:24 PM
To: David Farber
Cc: ip; Dan Brickley
Subject: Re: [IP] Re:     This is BAD news -- Google Ordered to Turn Over YouTube User Data

Hi Dave,

For IP if you like...

Dan makes a really important point here. One the on hand, the fact
that we are all more identifiable as a result of social networks in
which we exist suggests that the judge was just plain wrong (even
wronger than others have already said) in saying that the YouTube IDs
are not personally-identifiable. But on the other hand, to the extent
that Dan is correct about the revealing nature of the social web (true
for some of us now, more and more in the future), we have to face the
fact that merely limiting disclosure of personal information from one
source is less and less unlikely to protect privacy effectively across
the Web.

Applying this view to the Viacom v. YouTube case suggests that privacy
protection has to focus more limiting how people and institutions can
*use* personal information even as we recognize that it is harder and
harder to protect privacy by access control alone.

Some of my colleagues wrote about this in more detail in:

        Information Accountability
        CACM, June 2008
        (draft at http://dig.csail.mit.edu/2008/06/info-accountability-cacm-weitzner.pdf)

Best,

Danny

On Jul 3, 2008, at 8:10 PM, David Farber wrote:

> ________________________________________
> 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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