Interesting People mailing list archives
Re: This is BAD news -- Google Ordered to Turn Over YouTube User Data
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2008 22:26:17 -0700
________________________________________ From: Daniel Weitzner [djweitzner () csail mit edu] Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2008 8:24 PM To: David Farber Cc: ip; Dan Brickley Subject: Re: [IP] Re: This is BAD news -- Google Ordered to Turn Over YouTube User Data Hi Dave, For IP if you like... Dan makes a really important point here. One the on hand, the fact that we are all more identifiable as a result of social networks in which we exist suggests that the judge was just plain wrong (even wronger than others have already said) in saying that the YouTube IDs are not personally-identifiable. But on the other hand, to the extent that Dan is correct about the revealing nature of the social web (true for some of us now, more and more in the future), we have to face the fact that merely limiting disclosure of personal information from one source is less and less unlikely to protect privacy effectively across the Web. Applying this view to the Viacom v. YouTube case suggests that privacy protection has to focus more limiting how people and institutions can *use* personal information even as we recognize that it is harder and harder to protect privacy by access control alone. Some of my colleagues wrote about this in more detail in: Information Accountability CACM, June 2008 (draft at http://dig.csail.mit.edu/2008/06/info-accountability-cacm-weitzner.pdf) Best, Danny On Jul 3, 2008, at 8:10 PM, David Farber wrote:
________________________________________ From: Dan Brickley [danbri () danbri org] Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2008 7:55 PM To: David Farber Subject: Re: [IP] Re: This is BAD news -- Google Ordered to Turn Over YouTube User Data Dave, IP if you like, One aspect apparently missed from both the Judge's ruling and the EFF's analysis, is the degree to which YouTube username IDs can be readily and mechanically linked via other online profiles to real world identities. Hyperlinks from other 'social Web' sites (eg. FriendFeed, MyBlogLog) to YouTube profile pages, particularly those that use the XFN microformat HTML idioms, or FOAF markup, make it easier to find the people behind the account IDs. And this gets easier with every passing month as more such links are made, and as those sites offer more machine-readable profile data. Furthermore, the links needn't be made by the profile owner; the association can be made by friends, fans, contacts and stalkers. Google themselves have offered a Web service API to just such data, harvested and indexed from the public Web (their 'social graph API') since early this year, which will return other profile URLs when fed a YouTube profile URL that has incoming links from a FOAF or XFN-enabled site that describes the connection. FWIW I posted an example, details and links earlier in http://danbri.org/words/2008/07/03/359 An interesting scenario to consider here would be if an "anonymous" account on YouTube were revealed in this dataset as uploading copyrighted content without approval, yet the account's buddylist had IDs that were linked via cross-site hyperlinks to profiles of identifiable people. cheers, Dan _______________________________________From: Michael R. Nelson [mnelson () pobox com] Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2008 3:20 PM To: David Farber Subject: Re: [IP] Re: This is BAD news -- Google Ordered to Turn Over YouTube User Data Even though the decision will almost certainly appealed, the fact that a judge ruled for Viacom indicates how badly we need to rationalize how copyright applies online. It's frightening that the privacy rights of tens of millions of YouTube users matter so little. If this decision stands, there would be nothing to prevent any content owner (in the US or elsewhere) from suing Goggle and getting the data Viacom is demanding. Michael R. Nelson Visiting Professor, Internet Studies CCT Georgetown University Washington, DC David Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/07/court-ruling-will-expose-viewing-habits-youtube-us------------------------------------------- Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
------------------------------------------- Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Current thread:
- This is BAD news -- Google Ordered to Turn Over YouTube User Data David Farber (Jul 03)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: This is BAD news -- Google Ordered to Turn Over YouTube User Data David Farber (Jul 03)
- Re: This is BAD news -- Google Ordered to Turn Over YouTube User Data David Farber (Jul 03)
- Re: This is BAD news -- Google Ordered to Turn Over YouTube User Data David Farber (Jul 03)
- Re: This is BAD news -- Google Ordered to Turn Over YouTube User Data David Farber (Jul 03)