Judge gives away your (yes, YOU) private info, Viacom to blame
According to Wired, a judge ordered that Google must hand over private user data from YouTube to Viacom. All of that data.
So as long as you’ve used YouTube, your private data will be handed over to Viacom. Viacom, which owns CBS, MTV, BET, Nickelodeon, CMT, Spike, VH1, Comedy Central, Logo and Showtime, as well as Paramount and Dreamworks, claims that YouTube has more copyright-infringing materials than user created videos. They’re basically pissed because people are uploading segments of shows (and that’s all you can upload, YouTube uploads cap out at 10 minutes) and they’re not getting paid for them. So they’ve somehow convinced a court to turn over your private data.
This is, simply put, bullshit. Whoever this judge is, he seriously needs to be condemned to 15 years of dial-up only Internet access or maybe some type of festering boils or something. There is no need to have private user data to see whether or not the majority of videos are user created or violate copyright law.
Viacom was also asking for source code from Google that would show their advertising model. If someone can tell me how that would even slightly pertain to the issue at hand, please let me know, because it seems more like an attempt at Viacom to gain this information in order to use it towards their own end. Big media is dying, quickly, and they’d like to take down whoever they can along with them.
From a personal note, as many people who know me will relate, I am a big fan of boycotting things. Protesting, assassination and peeing all over the bathroom doesn’t work nearly as well as boycotting. The power of the people is in the people’s dollar, don’t shop at a store, it will go out of business. Currently, I have two lifetime boycotts: Verizon and Wal-Mart, because they are truly evil corporations. Yahoo! is close behind, though the good they sometimes do occasionally makes me think they just make some really bad decisions now and then. Viacom has now been added to my list of lifetime boycotts with no chance of parole. Hah! Now they’re sorry.
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