Piracy vs. Privacy

Google's YouTube is probably a stomach ache for the company. Recently I wrote about Sen. Liebermann and his demand that YouTube take down videos. Now Google finished a court date with media giant Viacom over copyright violations. The net result: Google has to surrender 12 terabytes of data on user searches. Already people are talking about the implications of this, and whether it is an invasion of privacy. In my opinion Viacom is getting a large test run of Google Ad Planner, the new marketing tool released by Google.

Google Ad Planner is supposed to be a tool that generates marketing data for targeting the right audience on the Internet. It uses Google Analytics and creates easy-to-use charts to determine Website viewing habits or searches in categories. Viacom is getting the raw data, but in a way, it is getting an opportunity to sift through the preferences of millions of viewers. Likely it realizes this, and initially in its demands from Google, it wanted the source code for YouTube. The judge did not grant that request, and with good reason.

Were Viacom to acquire the source code for YouTube in combination with raw user data, it is possible the media company could develop a rival media tracking tool. This might have been on the list of things to do in order to reduce competition from the popular YouTube. Instead it got a muzzle placed on YouTube and gleefully gets insight into what people are actually choosing to watch. This is worth its weight in gold, even if the stated point is to prevent piracy.

While most predictions are doom and gloom about privacy fears, I doubt that Viacom will be able to do much more than get a snapshot of the general online video environment. Piracy is overhyped and is an easy scapegoat for a company to use, but most judges would more readily defend privacy I think. Viacom getting access to records is probably just more of a marketing strategy though, and is less of a concern from an invasion of privacy angle.