Judge Louis L. Stanton of the Southern District Court of New York has ordered Google to turn over to Viacom its records of which users watched which videos on You Tube. Visited by around 80 million people a month, You Tube is the world's largest video sharing site. The verdict has raised concerns among You Tube users and privacy advocates that this information could be misused or fall into the wrong hands.
Viacom (a media conglomerate which produces television, music, and movies) has said that the collected I.P. addresses will only be used by their lawyers to further its billion dollar lawsuit against Google for copyright infringement. They also said that in most cases I.P. addresses (your computer's address) can't be used to identify individual users.
Privacy advocates counter by saying that in many cases, technology experts and others have been able to link I.P. addresses to individuals using other records of their online activities. Kurt Opsall, a lawyer for an online civil liberties group said users should have a right to challenge and contest the revealing of this deeply private information.
AHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
16 years ago
5 comments:
I agree it is a little intrusive that technology experts can track down everything done on a computer by looking at the IP address. I believe that a person has the freedom to do whatever they please while in the privacy of their own homes without having to worry that they might get caught. On the other hand, like we read in the articles the other day, the companies aren’t really using the information to track down anything personal to use against you. So they use it to send you ads to make some money, who cares? It doesn’t really effect you by having the ads on your screen. If it were an ad about a completely random topic then you wouldn’t even notice it. Even if it has to do with something you once looked up, you probably still wouldn’t pay any attention to it. In the end the ability to track these IP addresses can only benefit us. In a different article that we read about the privacy issue, it states how this ability can track sites that terrorist may use, or in this situation to prove a case. It’s a little annoying that it can be done, but truthfully it is really not a big deal and it is not really effecting us.
I agree with Atara. I don't think it's such a big deal that companies are sending you adds based on your interests to make money. Of course they're going to utilize the ability to track your interest in order to send you adds that tailor to you based on your past searches. Perhaps you'll find that you benefit from the adds they send you. If you decide that the add is not for you, you can just simply delete it. It's not negatively affecting anyone for the most part. However I do understand why people would be upset that companies can and use peoples IP addresses. They feel intruded upon, but they have to realize that this is the least of their problems when it comes down to intrusion or spying. Your constantly being watched whether or not you realize it so start focusing on the more crucial things in life.
Nowadays people do no even think of privacy until they end up in a situation where their privacy has been violated. The fact is everyone who uses the internet is being spied upon and there is nothing that will change that. In class we discussed three articles that gave many reasons for the invasion of privacy we face. Reasons given were Commercialism, security concerns and even that privacy was a trend of the past not of the present. I feel that what a person does in his or her own home is private and for their eyes only.
The fact that viacom now has access to all these records shows what kind of society. The government has sanctioned a verdict that takes power from the common man and puts information into the hands of the few. The so called Web 2.0 is a disaster and just makes business more powerful.
I do not agreed with the argument such that the web is making business more powerful. I believe that the web had given us, the consumers, more freedom and power as never before. The Viacom vs. Youtube is just an result of that freedom. Even though I do not agreed on given our ip addresses, i believe they have the right to see who is uploading copyrighted materials on Youtube. And at the end, like Atara says, it won't harm us as long as we are not doing anything wrong.
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