The recent court order directing Google to hand over data to Viacom about every YouTube video ever watched strikes many people as an absurd overreach of the law into the privacy of anyone who has ever used YouTube (i.e., almost everyone on the Internet). Google should definitely keep fighting the ruling if it can.
But if it can’t, perhaps it should comply with it in a creative way. The data in question are data logs containing the records of every video watched on YouTube, by whom, and at what times. The court is also ordering that Google hand over all videos that have ever been taken down for any reason. The logs alone take up 12 terabytes. Google should print them out and deliver them on paper.
It would literally fill up the Library of Congress. That is roughly the equivalent of all the printed books in the Library of Congress (by one estimate, others put it at 20 terabytes—either way, it’s a lot of paper). The court order never states what form, the data must be delivered in.
(Photo via, appropriately enough, the Library of Congress And hat tip to reader Paul Christiansen for the original suggestion).
thats a lot of trees
I love it. Erick - you’re a genius!
That’s a lot of “logs”
Youtube had a total disregard for copyrights and Google knew it when they bought them. What goes around comes around.
How many trees would 20 would it take to print out 20 terabytes of data?….
Hey Viacom: stop being a bunch of douche bags.
What’s the point of this post?
erick - please delete the comment of the a-hole who posted the readtheanswer link.. so lame.
Nice idea. But a huge of paper, so I wouldn’t actually do it.
Punch cards. I suggest punch cards.
how about Microfiche? Let them scan it and digest it on their own time and dime.
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-microfiche.htm
No. They should zip the data up, split it up into 1.4MB split RAR archives, and then deliver 9 million floppy disks.
… or a Microfiche with a watermark to discourage unauthorized reproduction.
“anyone who has ever used YouTube (i.e., almost everyone on the Internet). ”
wrong
“Google should print them out and deliver them on paper.”
did this tech crunch author even read the court order? wow
…so Google should pay the damages, not hand us over to the wolves!
“Google should print them out and deliver them on paper.” I think you are mad for saying that.
So you want trees to die just to send off some papers to Viacom?
While I think this idea is splendid, there was actually an Act passed by Congress a few years ago requiring that all inforrmation and documents presented in the discovery phase of a case be made available via electronic format.
It was an effort to keep the System up-to-date in case of an event just like this one. I can’t recall the name of the Act at the moment, but I’ll poke around and see if I can’t dig it up.
(Interestingly enough, I learned this at the Personal Democracy Forum last month in NYC, which I attended because of a pass I got from TechCrunch!)
My issue is that YouTube and Google *are* clearly in the wrong here. Sure, Viacom are being douche’s. But that we’re pulling for Google on this blows my mind. Google/YouTube stole. Clearly. Knowingly. And they still aren’t really doing anything about it.
Viacom being douche’s within their legal rights is somehow worse than Google being assholes *outside* of theirs?
Google shot itself in the foot by blaming users for the copyright violations under DMCA. The judge has responded in kind, requesting data on those users who acted as part of the violation. The form of the data is irrelevant - if Google complies (which it will because the alternative is to give up its source-code), it will litereally DESTROY YouTube just like Napster was destroyed. We still have Hulu though…(who’s ClownCo. now?)
Hey, here’s an idea: how about our American friends get their elected representatives to scrap the DMCA anyway? Then we can stop having to deal with this poo once and for all.
(of course it’s political)
@19
But it is not Google/YouTube who are ripping the videos, it is the users. If Google are held responsible, then are you suggesting that they vet every single item posted?
whatever happens, Google should at least pay any court-awarded damages in pennies…
I got yer legal tender RIGHT HERE!
Erick, are you trying to replace Duncan by commenting on legal processes on which you have done absolutely no research?
Think of the trees!
No they should deliver them on something painful like 5 1/4 floppies.
What they should do is not comply.
i understand where they are coming from but they do not need that data at all.
Google shouldn’t print that out, they should fax it to Viacom and let them foot the bill themselves.
@Player-x That’s innovative.
Google should deliver the logs in a stream of encrypted data at 1kb
will somebody, please, think of the trees?
According to CNet, the court specifically states that the data is to be handed over on multiple 1TB hard drives.
But since we’re having fun, I suggest Google output the logs on olde timey 1 inch wide ticker tape….. printed in binary.
(I win)
How is this an invasion of privacy? Google has this information anyway, so its there whether you like it or not.
YouTube has profited from copyrighted content and therefore is open to face these accusations, requiring them to hand over their data to prove their “innocence.”
Now, in what format it is handed over in is up to the “don’t be evil” chiefs… But one would argue, printing 12 terabytes of data on paper is “evil,” by way of wasting trees.
Google screwed it’s community on this one, by trying to explain how on the one hand they are able to keep pornography off of YouTube, and on the other they are unable to remove copyrighted materials.
Regardless of how you feel about producers of media, they have rights that need to be protected, ESPECIALLY if google is going to try and profit of providing copies of their products.
Send them in Tree form its better for the environment
Greenpeace co-founder says use more trees, not less
http://tinyurl.com/6×2awg
ugh… do we have to go over this again?
The absolute BEST way to combat CO2 in the atmosphere is to cut down LOTS of trees and bury the wood in a land fill.
Printing out 20 TB on paper and storing it in a giant filing cabinet is the BEST thing we could do to help the environment. Viacom should demand the data in paper form and then sell the carbon credits to Gore.
willie, are you serious? Tree’s soak up cO2.
There should be smarter ways to prevent this rule to be implemented. But this is a good one, just for letting this judge to know what he is judging about. He is not getting it. Damn!!
Print them on the back side of that paper that MS shipped to Europe.
What a horrible waste of paper. Rather, feed the records into a tool that turns them into a video stream. Apply a little pixelation so even if individual records can be reconstructed, they still can’t be recognized reliably by OCR.
It’s an interesting dilemma. Google claims they’re the vehicle, that the users are responsible. Viacom and courts want to know who those users are.
Now, let’s say the number of users are in the tens of thousands. Will Viacom sue each of them? Will Viacom pick a dozen scape-goats to make examples out of them?
It’s like the VCR, the “mix-tape”, etc. Technology is giving us something new, that lots of people do, and instead of embracing the technology they’re fighting it.
How long will it be until someone starts a “post a viacom video on Youtube” day, and a “flash mob” of people do that?
Send it all in big giant CAPTCHAs. Anti-OCR.
This kind of precedent is dangerous. Now if any large corporation thinks maybe it’s possible their copyrighted content has been made available elsewhere they have every right to everything about that “elsewhere”. Example: they *think* you pirated a couple of TV shows, they now have complete legal access to all past, present, and future emails as well as every keystroke you type or have typed on your computer. You now have ZERO privacy, all because they think you might have pirated a TV show.
@41:
Hey!
That’s a great idea!
Brilliant! Unfortunately, most U.S. jurisdictions require the data to be delivered in the way in which it’s kept, but it’s fun to think about. And maybe the case is being fought in one of the districts in which there’s still a loophole. Possibilities…
Just wait until they get to the discovery phase. Then Google’s goose is cooked. I’ll bet there are several megs worth of emails back and forth from the googler’s (unless they’ve destroyed them — which would be felonious in intself) about how they knew the copyrighted content was up on YouTube and knew exactly where it was.
If Viacom’s lucky, they may even find email from some Google exec cogitating on how they could monetize all of that illegal copyrighted content. God knows they can’t find any other way to make money from this albatross.
You don’t have to like Viacom, but 19’s right… Google stole, wholesale theft and not just clips, oftentimes entire movies. They knew exactly what was being posted — No safe harbor for yooz!
Google’s douchiness out-douches the most doucheful of the douches.
@Jacob
Too true. I honestly think they will have almost every person’s email who has ever used the internet.
While I find Viacom’s court battle valiant, they are fighting a losing war. Haven’t they learned anything from the fiasco of shutting down Napster? The music industry hasn’t been the same since. There will always be a way for the copyrighted material to appear on the net and for someone to copy it and repost it somewhere.
If you can’t beat ‘em, might as well join ‘em.
I can hear the environmentalists chiming in now.
@44, well if they want it how it is kept, send it to them on drives formatted with GFS, they store the files in GFS themselves.
Oh… And Google’s high-falutin argument that this is all about protecting its users privacy is so rhetorically turd-infused its a real knee-slapper.
Google’s the worst privacy violater on the planet, but not the only one by far… Your ISP has the data, as does every router in between you and YouTube. You click on a YouTube link, and there are probably dozens of companies who log that click.
You’d have to be a real ass-hat to think your YouTube “click” was tucked nicely and securely away in Google’s “privacy-vault (guffaw!).
Okay, we can save the trees. I like the floppy disc and faxing ideas, except that stacks of paper are so much more visually satisfying.
Anyone else know about the law requiring all trial documents to be delivered in electronic form that Andrew, @18, is talking about? Does a fax count?
>> The court order never states what form, the data must be delivered in.
Except on page 13 where it states:
“While the Logging database is large, all of its contents can be copied onto a few “over-the-shelf” four-terabyte hard drives (Davis Decl. ¶ 22).”
Google tried to argue “…that plaintiffs’ request is unduly burdensome because producing the enormous amount of information in the Logging database (about 12 terabytes of data) “would be expensive and time-consuming…” So, they’d look like idiots if they delivered it in the most expensive and time-consuming format.
They could also deliver the data like all 0 bits on one HD and all 1 bits on another. Nobody ever said the data had to be in the right order, did they?
Viacom and the judge should be sued for attempting privacy invasion.
All this order does is give Viacom full access to data for market research purposes. Look at the other requests they made that the judge denied - such as the algorithm uses to return search results!
Attempted legally-supported open corporate espionage. That’s all this was *ever* about, methinks - getting a peak under the hood.
@51
“While the Logging database is large, all of its contents can be copied onto a few “over-the-shelf” four-terabyte hard drives (Davis Decl. ¶ 22).”
The operative word here is the descriptive “can” - meaning physically possible. If this were the prescriptive method, the word used would very likely be “shall” or “must” which have specific meanings in law (or so I understand, not being an attorney myself)
The order at the end of the document states
“The motion to compel production of all data from the Logging database concerning each time a YouTube video has been viewed on the YouTube website or through embedding on a third-party website is granted;”
That seems pretty open ended to me. Paper would be the best, floppies would be fantastic, FAX is innovative, and the rest of the ideas speak to the absurdity of the situation, and the stupidity of the judge…. ok, maybe just senile and stuck in the paper age
Continuing my post… why in the world does Viacom even need data about who has viewed videos? I thought there was no legal issue about viewing copyright-infringing material, only distributing it.
I could understand YouTube having to hand over logs of anyone who has ever uploaded a video, but getting free privacy-invading data on everyone who has ever viewed something is preposterous!
Google didn’t steal. They’re providing a service. There’s still many viral videos that are published legally by users. Certainly, users are using this service to spread so-called copyrighted videos (and I call it so-called because I don’t believe in copyrights in the first place). As far as YouTube/Google making money, I doubt it. Eric Schmidt had said that they still are investigating ways of monetizing YouTube. Heck, they even bribed a few of the major recording industries to allow users to post/host music videos legally (or at least get the studios to use their service as a CDN to host the studios’ music videos).
I’m certain Google buying YouTube was a twofold political deal to prevent another Napster disaster from initially happening (as well as using it as a potential advertising platform for their AdWords). Naturally, the very nature of YouTube was a ticking time bomb. However, I argue that YouTube has done more good for the world than hurting the few companies, lawyers, executives and shareholders who typically are overcompensated in the first place. I mean, take a look at how Japanese game shows are now coming to America because Americans (and others) have become fascinated. Without YouTube and similar viral mechanisms on the net, these shows would remain local only to Japan. Also, providing unlimited access to videos, legal or not, allows cross culturalism where people from other countries have the capability of people’s content. For instance, Fernando Miyata is slowly being discovered as one of the best guitarist in the world. Lastly, (and here’s important point) is that YouTube has globally allowed people easy access to as much content as its available. Distributors have always been stingy about the way they market their stuff. Worse yet, they stop supporting their own artists after their artists fade (or rather when these corporations decide they no longer want to market them). Instead, we’re treated to nostalgia by allowing us to view things locked away in dusty vaults. We have history and can educate people on our past culture through the use of viral videos. However, because corporations, lawyers, executives and shareholders are all stingy bastards, everyone except them loses in this.
It’s not intellectual property anymore. It’s not about individuals. It’s just corporate assets. That’s what they should call this from now on. Give it a cold, hard name so that people will stop sympathizing with these artists puppets and call it what it is.
@52 Typical freetard
For all of those people so concerned about the trees …
There are more pulp-growing forests in the US now than in 1920.
Fewer trees than ever are being cut down for paper because of recycling, and the declining newspaper business.
It would actually offer a minor bump to the pulp industry that could relieve the price pressure newspapers are dealing with right now.
That said, I still like the microfilm and floppy disk ideas.
I think they should make a giant video and roll the information as credits.
for what reason has Google collected and stored that data in the first place? If Google would not be such a data maniac the court order would not even exist.
How about printed on toilet paper in Aramaic hieroglyphs?
Or they can say they sent it to Karl Rove first and he lost it.
What really annoys me is that we are getting face-to-face with Google’s idiotic, dogmatic data retention policies, that of never destroying anything; why did they keep such logs in the first place ?
What will happen when they subpoena all of the search logs next ?
Why did we ever trusted them with such data in the first place ?
I guess that’s why they posted their privacy policy today. Because there’s none.
Google should send the data encoded in UTF-16, as pure binary. and then use some DRM technique to stop viacom from translating the data electronically.
So it will all have to be done by hand. Mwhahahahaaaa, this solves the whole tree cutting problem. However i do like the idea, of faxing the data to viacom, so they foot the bill.
They also should print the data in a whitespace encoding.
I wonder what would happen if Google refused to produce the data or simply destroyed the data. Would the brand boost be worth it?
And waste so much of paper. Good for the ecology I say…
@ Unbelievable re:
“What really annoys me is that we are getting face-to-face with Google’s idiotic, dogmatic data retention policies, that of never destroying anything; why did they keep such logs in the first place ?”
Google knows the value of any and all info. They are a gigantic vacuum cleaner sucking up and organizing all info and reaping the Metcalfe’s Law benefits. Unfortunately the world is not “all good” and as they accumulate power/value (believe me, the retroactive quant and behavioral data they’re amassing is invaluable) they must play games with other power players. How they choose to play those games ultimately determines their value, how the other actors react and our relationship to our behavioral data.
In Dune-ian terms: He who controls the data controls the universe - and everyone wants to. But he who destroys data also exerts control and R-E-S-P-E-C-T. I smell a big ass showdown, if Google is serious about doing no evil, a statement which they have been carefully backing away from for very real and serious reasons.
Your move Googlio.
Nice (-: YouTube stole the content from Viacom so let them bleed!
how do you actually get 12-20TB of data to them anyway? DVD’s? Email? a whole server rack full of jbods?
Perhaps Google could encrypt all that data (you know, for security reasons… because this process could take a long time) and then send it to Viacom via morse code using 1’s and 0’s?
OR
Following on from their Google IO shirts, perhaps provide the information on a series of limited edition tshirts?
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008.....too-fancy/
?
Send them via Morse code
or with smoke signals
or with 1 inch punch cards that only a PDP-1 can read
or in color-coded peanuts
or via an 8-baud modem from the 70’s
Viacom is stupid. they get free advertising through YouTube,
and they should negotiate with Google just for that alone.
in our time, its easier for people to stop watching any Viacom content,
than YouTbue. And they know that, but try to suck some quick cash from big G by using that as an excuse.
What a waste of resources that would be - on paper. are there that many trees?
instead !! and a better idea maybe a massive jpeg image with a really random background so that the text can not be read by machines
Gene Hackman and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio would be proud.
To the commenters above that said google/youtube are clearly in the wrong - Viacom is attempting to prove not that youtube clearly benefitted from copyrighted material, but that they skewed search results in favour of them, and that they used them to spur their core business.
There was certainly copyrighted material all over the shop, but that this was the point of youtube? :p
Sir Roland Wilson was a Australian Commonwealth Statistician (Head of the Bureau of Statistics) in the 1930’s and 1940’s.
During a tax evasion case, he was asked to supply some private data from one his data providers. He incinerated all such data rather than supply any, at considerable professional risk.
I wonder if Google exec.’s are similarly protective of their users?
@Alvin
It would be interesting to see what happened if there were to be an ‘accident’ with the data. A fire, perhaps., and a coincidental lack of backups.
why stop at only 20 TB? Google can do better than that.
Why not rolling all of the videos in a single uncompressed high-definition video file, starting with all the two girls one cup submissions, with credits to the uploaders, and flashing the names of users in different fonts and styles and colors and sizes?
Of course, there is no need to use these fancy codecs to compress anything; just send the uncompressed raw video by email to Viacom, copying the judges and a special server in Google set up to receive such a monster.
Neither viacom or the judge would be able to handle the little monster, and google would have fully complied.
Everyone should follow the law. We need it for a better society.
Failing that, burn it to cds. It will only take about 30,000.
Oh, fuck the LAW. The law is a whore like everyone else. Do you really think anyone with money and power gives a fiddler’s fart about the law? I’m getting so sick of this business of tracking everything anyone’s ever done, analyzing it, selling it, data-mining & going back to charge people with “crimes”. This is some sick, OCD, anorexic-weighing-their-own-feces kind of stuff. It’s the kind of control freak shit that will leave us all sitting alone in apartments tearing up while we reminisce about when people actually had lives, to say nothing about the ridiculous legal possibilities it raises. Fuck the law, fuck Google, Viacom & the courts. I just want to go outside forever and never look at another computer.
Yes, there is something really OCD about all the legal crap these huge companies do to enforce copyright. It fucks them all in the ass.
Case in point: You can’t even buy Ally McBeal or the Wonder Years on DVD in the US, so all you people that loved those shows have NO way of watching that show legally unless some poor network has nothing else to show and puts those on for reruns. Or until they buy the Region 2 version and wonder why it don’t play on their DVD player. And why? Because paying for rights to all the music used in the show for the DVD sets is too expensive, so Fox (and what network was Wonder Years?) just canned the show instead for US viewers. There goes all the LEGAL purchasers for those shows. Worse, the networks aren’t even terribly open with people about this, so there are tons of unenlightened fans out there who in their frustration end up turning to… YouTube, torrenting, pirated copies, etc. (And just so I’m totally open here, those shows may still go out on DVD… but the music licensing is holding them up indefinitely with NO definite release dates and has been for years now.) There goes a few angry would-be customers that won’t trust the network to give them what they want.
So in the end, what is YouTube? A way to get media that you wouldn’t get because a) it’s not available legally in your jurisdiction, b) it’s way too expensive (have you seen how much imports cost at Virgin and even the international Amazon’s?) or c) you see no reason to upgrade to cable to see one show which you might buy on DVD later but will watch clips of on YouTube until then - or until Viacom ends up suing your ass right after they burn Google for your name and location and $1B and you can no longer afford any media whatsoever.
Keep making us hate you, big companies. We may be chained to your shows and your rappers and your movie stars, but when you’re burning, they can always sign on with another company and the show will go on.
In paper form, in a gothic font, 5 points, single-spaced, on both sides of the page. Should reduce the number of pages required by a good deal and OCR software can handle that for Viacom. Might take a while though…
@Shams
The law is a gallows to hang the poor and unprivileged. Nobody in power gives a crap about the law, they will do anything within their power to subvert the law or interpret it to their own best interest. -If- everybody indeed followed the law, that would work to build a harmonious and stable society [provided the laws themselves were any good]. As it is now, the law works against the people, not for them.
The law says, among other things, what the minimum wage is. Have you ever heard of someone who decided what the minimum wage is who had to actually live off of it?
Screw the law.
Ok they have my IP address, time of connection and user, and then what? You are going to come to spain for ask my isp my data? You need a spanish judge to do that. Even having my real name (easy if you are a bit smart) the worst they can do is to forbid me to enter in USA. But is imposible to do that with all the people in all the world.
Fight for your rights USA citizens, don’t allow this mafia to do whatever they want to do.
Good luck.
It would be completely ridiculous if Google had to get that. If they obtain this information, then they are really infringing upon a lot more privacy than anyone could have ever expected. I don’t know what the judges are thinking but they are extra stupid!
However Google decides to hand the data over should be cheap and easy to them - I suggest they tell Viacom that if they want the data they can copy it out (preferably by hand) themselves.
Why not send it as a series of images instead. You could even distort them in ways the impede optical character recognition without making problems for humans. That would be just as effective and more environmentally friendly.
Amazing all the concern for trees - which, by the way is a renewable resource.
The point of the post, which is obviously lost on the tree huggers who really do take life MUCH TOO SERIOUSLY, is that Viacom wants data that it really has no right to have. Thus, to make a point to Viacom, Google - should it really be required to provide the data after exhausting all available appeals - should deliver the data in the least convenient form possible.
At some point I hope people stop patronizing companies like Viacom who are contented to conduct business ‘Via” 20th century methods. The music industry is suffering greatly because of its idiotic approach to digital data. Now the same should happen to the movie/TV industry. As a website owner/content producer, I’m all for protecting rights to one’s creative content, but the onerousness of this ruling shows that the media companies have not a clue as to how to move forward in a digital age.
Yawn, Is anyone else waiting for Google to Take over the WOrld? Its gonna happen sooner or later you know.
JT
http://www.Ultimate-Anonymity.com
Hahaha! That floppy disc idea is fantastic. Finally a good use for the millions of 1.4mb floppies that are laying around all over the place. Put the records on them and send them to Viacom with a bill.
This is madness on the part of the US government.
They want to see who, when, what and from the IP? If that isn’t big brother - invasion of privacy, then I don’t know what is.
They can use that for other purposes, like who is watching anti-gov vids, anti-bush vids, reli