Google ordered to hand over YouTube user data

A federal judge last week ordered Google to hand over a roster of user data on videos viewed on YouTube, in an effort to help Viacom shore up its lawsuit against the search-engine giant.

Privacy advocates decried the move, according to The New York Times, but both companies vowed to try to find a way of protecting the users’ identities. Outside lawyers alone will view the roster and only to help inform Viacom’s copyright infringement claims.

In a separate part of Judge Louis L. Stanton’s ruling, Google, which owns the video-sharing Web site YouTube, will not have to give up the programming code for its search engine. Viacom had sought the code to bolster its claims that YouTube site searches are designed to find and offer copyright-infringing clips more readily than home-made videos.

Viacom won, however, in its bid for the login IDs and IP addresses of YouTube users, which the company hopes will show how popular protected videos have been compared with others.