Judge's Order For Google To Hand Over YouTube Usage Morphs Into Google Backlash On Storing IPs

from the backlash-everywhere dept

There was plenty of attention given to the judge's order that Google hand over log files to Viacom's lawyers in the Viacom/YouTube lawsuit, with much of it focused on what an awful ruling this was. Now it appears that some are trying to use this bad ruling to actually focus negative attention on Google instead. A lawyer who is also suing YouTube over copyright issues mistakenly claims that Google has tricked the press into making Viacom the enemy here. That's not quite true, though. Most of the anger was focused on the judge's decision, not on Viacom. However, he does make another, related point that is getting picked up by others as well: "How else do you explain why they have been collecting and using IP addresses to monetize their site (for a while now), yet only now, with great self righteousness, claim to be concerned about producing IP addresses?"

Of course, that's not quite an accurate portrayal of the situation either. It's one thing to store your own log files -- it's quite another to be asked to hand them over to a random third party. Louis Solomon's statement above is like saying "how can a doctor store your medical info and then, with great self righteousness, claim to be concerned about protecting your medical info." It's rather easy: the doctor has a right to the medical info, while a third party does not.

However, that hasn't stopped some privacy advocates from asking why Google has kept the log files in the first place. This doesn't strike me as being that big a deal, to be honest. There are plenty of reasons why Google should be able to control its own log files. I can understand questions concerning what it does with the log files should those actions violate user privacy -- but merely tracking how people use their websites hardly seems like a privacy violation.

Filed Under: backlash, ip addresses, privacy
Companies: google, viacom, youtube

Massive Backlash Against Sweden's Internet Spying Bill

from the and-the-response? dept

We were surprised that politicians in Sweden approved a highly questionable bill that allowed rather widespread spying on all sorts of internet communications, despite widespread protests. Of course, now that the bill has become law, it seems that the protests are only getting much, much louder, going beyond the initial group of bloggers complaining to the mainstream press, and including large companies like Google and Telia moving servers out of Sweden to protect their users. Plus, nearby Belgium is threatening to sue, pointing out that Belgian citizens may be spied on without any apparent reason. Amazingly, the politicians who approved this bill are staying largely silent, despite the growing clamor about it. They originally tried to brush off the complaints from "spirited amateurs" who just need to just need to "calm down." But that doesn't seem to be working very well.

While it's unclear what will happen here, this is just the latest in a long line of recent efforts to bring together people to call attention to questionable political moves that politicians in the past have been able to sneak through with little public scrutiny. While there is always some risk of misdirecting the potential "mob mentality" that can arise in these situations, it should make politicians start to think twice before believing they can just sneak through any law.

Filed Under: backlash, surveillance, sweden, wiretapping