Google, Viacom in Agreement on YouTube Data

NEW YORK, July 15: Google
will be able to strip user details from the YouTube visitor data that it has
been compelled to provide Viacom as part of a $1-billion copyright infringement
suit.

Earlier this month, a U.S.
court ruled that Google must provide data on every video watched on YouTube to
Viacom, which last year filed a suit alleging “massive intentional copyright
infringement” on the video-sharing site YouTube. The judge accepted Viacom’s
demand for YouTube’s “logging” database, which contains data on what videos
were watched and when, as well as the logins and IP addresses of the people who
watched them.

Google and Viacom have
come to an agreement that permits YouTube to strip out actual user and visitor
IDs and IP addresses, in order to address privacy protection concerns.

—By Mansha Daswani