Front Page

New York Federal Court decision to compel Google to give Viacom YouTube users' viewer history

New York Federal District Court Judge Louis Stanton has ordered Google to turn over details about YouTube user's video viewing histories. New Media Rights talked with the San Francisco Chronicle's Technology reporter Anastasia Ustinova about this troubling decision, and its implications for privacy and its chilling effect on an open, participatory grassroots culture.

Privacy Falls into YouTube's Data Tar Pit

As a big lawsuit grinds forward, its parties engage in discovery, a wide-ranging search for information "reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence." (FRCP Rule 26(b)) And so Viacom has calculated that scouring YouTube's data dumps would help provide evidence in Viacom's copyright lawsuit.

Taxonomy upgrade extras: 

On Distinguishing Between Creative Commons, The Public Domain, and All Rights Resesrved

Over the last week we’ve noticed at two instances where editors from mainstream newspapers have confused whether a particular image is licensed under Creative Commons, is in the public domain, or is all rights reserved. In one case, Technology Editor Charles Arthur of The Guardian blogged about a dust up between some photographers and eBay:

Taxonomy upgrade extras: 

Pages