Piracy does not equal Privacy

Great news came out his week regarding internet video. Google has been ordered to provide Viacom the log files of YouTube users. This data will be used to prove that copyright infringing videos are the significant majority of content actually watched, demonstrating that YouTube's traffic and success is built on piracy instead of user generated content. Viacom has stated that this data will not be used to target and bring charges against individuals, and in fact the company will be held in contempt of court if it uses the data for anything beyond determining the popularity of pirated content. Unsurprisingly, much of the media is up in arms on privacy concerns and the influential nonprofit advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) released strong criticism. The top issue is the belief that the collected user name and... [read full story]