A US judge has ordered Google to expose to Viacom the video-viewing habits of everyone who has ever used YouTube. The decision was condemned by the internet giant and privacy advocates.`
A spokesperson for Google Ireland told RTÉ in a statement that Google intended to ask Viacom to respect users' privacy and allow Google to anonymise the logs before producing them under the court's order.
US District Court Judge Louis Stanton backed Viacom's request for data on which YouTube users watch which videos on the website in order to support its case in a billion-dollar copyright lawsuit against Google.
Viacom claims Google, which bought YouTube in 2006, acts as a willing accomplice to internet users who put clips of Viacom's copyrighted television programmes on the popular video-sharing website.
'We are disappointed the court granted Viacom's overreaching demand for viewing history,' Google senior litigation counsel Catherine Lacavera said.
The judge ordered Google to give Viacom log-in names of YouTube users and internet protocol (IP) addresses identifying which computers they used for viewing videos.
Viacom issued a statement saying it wanted only to bolster its case against Google and not to expose or pursue viewers of copyrighted videos.
In what Google claims as a partial victory, the judge denied Viacom's request to get its hands on secret source code used in YouTube video searches as well as for internet searches. He also refused a Viacom request to order Google to provide access to the videos YouTube users store in private YouTube files.
The Viacom requests were made in a 'discovery' evidence-gathering phase of a lawsuit filed in March of last year in US District Court in New York state.
The Viacom lawsuit has been merged with similar civil litigation being pursued by the English Premier League, which says match clips are routinely posted on YouTube without authorisation,
Industry insiders suspect Viacom is using the lawsuit as a negotiating tactic and has no intention of taking the matter to trial.
