Viacom's big brother court techniques of obtaining YouTube user
information is
a violation of user privacy rights. It was bad enough when the NSA
spying became
obtrusive after the Patriot Act was passed, but it is unacceptable to
have a
multinational corporation raping user privacy rights.

Google Attorney Catherine Lacavera said that: “We are disappointed the
court granted Viacom’s overreaching demand for viewing history.... We
are asking Viacom to respect users’ privacy and allow us to anonymize
the logs before producing them under the court’s order.”

Kurt Opshal at the Electronic Frontier Foundation noted that: "The
court’s order grants Viacom's request and erroneously ignores the
protections of the federal Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), and
threatens to expose deeply private information about what videos are
watched by You Tube users. The VPPA passed after a newspaper disclosed
Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's video rental records. As Congress
recognized, your selection of videos to watch is deeply personal and
deserves the strongest protection."