youtube REQUIRED to turn over user lists

Wow, this is insane. Youtube is required now to turn over lists of everything you have watched as well as your IP and NAME.

tech.yahoo.com...

Privacy, what is that?

What's disturbing is that they care about the videos we WATCH instead of just focusing on what we UPLOAD. Will they be able to track our IP's if we're not signed in when watching videos?

I always log on to other people's wireless networks, so how does that work? Like right now, I'm at a motel.

whats the reason they want information from youtube? is it national security? probably more like..........just cuz they can. all this for no particular reason, they just want to know what were watching?

Did you read the article? So individuals can be sued based on what they watched.

amazing! as usual, the end user is left without any kind of protection, we allowed this to happen, little by little they change the world, these almost insignificant things have changed everything, soon they will have access to everyones surfing patterns, leading them to the records of our online lives...

what can we do? what can we really do? not much.
what if they decided to sue all the people that watched something of their "property"? what can the average joe do? file another lawsuit? spend millions of dollars like viacom defending oneself?

we are boxed in a system that does not care for the pawns that made them rich in the first place....

What's sad about the IP address thing is that unless you have a static IP address, after two weeks whatever IP address they show you having, isn't yours anymore. It belongs to some other customer of that ISP.

Dynamic IP addresses do expire after 2 weeks...

This is also assuming that everyone logs in to YouTube to watch videos. If you don't want your IP recorded by them to turn over, use a proxy server then.

I think they're going about it the wrong way, if someone uploads a copyrighted movie or whatever, yeah go after them. Not the people that watch it. On a site like YouTube where you watch videos for free, how can the end user be punished for watching something someone else proveded and YouTube allowed to be shown?

reply to post by Marid Audran


did you read my post? i think i said that, that is NOT a good enough reason in my opinion

reply to post by Shaker


this is exactly my point. but you said it better than i could. i use youtube pretty often, but i dont do anything illegal on there, its free to sign up, and its free to watch the videos. now they want our blood..........

Just so no one gets confused, this has nothing to do with your rights or illegal activity or anything like that. You agree to the terms of the contract, everything else becomes irrelevant.

There's no law saying that you are required to wear two pairs of socks. But in a building I worked at as a guard, it was actually a rule. I could toss you off the property for non-compliance, and even arrest you if didn't cooperate.

EDIT to add: Think about that the next time you're driving down some highway that happens to be privately owned and operated by some foreign company.

[edit on 8/1/0808 by jackinthebox]

IF this is true it is sickening and outrageous. Next we will have to register the books in our own home. What the @#$%!!!! We have been taken over and NOW live in a police state. It aint coming - it's here and going to get worse unless we figure out how to change it.

you said it, this is a thinly veiled police state, that is where we are heading every day, we have no rights.
It is true that when one signs up, one "accepts" the T&C, but since they reserve the right to change them at any time, without telling you first what they plan to do later.
they already own everything you post forever on youtube.

i wish there was something we could do, like never going to youtube again, alas that is just a dream, people don't care enough about anything that matters anymore, they don't realize how they own some of us, and if they see it, they say, "whats the big deal?"...

I have never 'signed in' to UTUBE...........I have just watched by clicking links from here......
I HAVE surfed around on UTUBE watching things but I never signed in.....I have not seen a need to as I can watch things without signing in to anything....

[edit on 1-8-2008 by theRiverGoddess]

Nothing short of a full-scale revolution will get our country back, but indeed, the U.S. Government knows it rules a nation of cowards, yet I assure you they'll not get me or mine. Unfortunately, we ARE doomed in time. It is inevitable. Oh, yes...the rise of the fourth reich is in full swing. Get your passports and leave them to play with themselves...as if there was anywhere we could go to escape. I so wish I was 10 again...or 90.

On a side note: You can find and use a proxy to hide your ip address as only one avenue among many of circumventing their ever-watchful eye.

[edit on 1-8-2008 by lagnar]

[edit on 1-8-2008 by lagnar]

Originally posted by Marid Audran
Did you read the article? So individuals can be sued based on what they watched.

I read that and I find that outrageous. Users do not DOWNLOAD the content they add it to their favorites or a play list. All the content is on youtube itself. Viacom is a joke and if they do try to sue users for "watching" not "downloading" content I will foam at the mouth

Here's a thought:

How liable will sites be for "hosting" posted (and possibly copyrighted) youtube material?

Just about every site like this one on the web has youtube embedding. As does facebook, as does myspace, and on and on. Will the owners of those sites then be open to lawsuit?

If a precedent is set when these suits come to pass, Viacom et al. could wind up owning the entire internet....

According to the article, it's not a done deal:

Many are already speculating that Viacom will sue the users who watched the videos as a next step. Heck, it's so popular with the RIAA, why not try it here?

Will Google comply with the order? Good question.

Did the OP read the article?

The OP did, obviously, until the supreme court rules, anything is still open... however, this is pretty clearly stated

"This issue will likely not stop here as the combatants continue to fight it out in court, but in the meantime, the sobering reality is that it's time to rethink what you're watching on YouTube (or any other video sharing service, for that matter), as it's all too likely that's about to become a matter of public record."

reply to post by Marid Audran


Wow, so the government is trying to track their progress in the on going attempt to dumb us down, to which youtube has been so helpful... For every actually funny/though provoking video on youtube there are likely a thousand Rick Roll's and boring webcam response videos...

What does the government hope to learn from what people watch on youtube? How to produce more hilarious pet related antics?

I love how they just come right out and tell us they're watching us these days, the nerve, luckily there's so much going on on youtube the government probably won't know what to do with it all

reply to post by Shaker


Just looked at wiki about proxies and it says this, so sounds like you have to be careful with these also.

In using a proxy server (for example, anonymizing HTTP proxy), all data sent to the service being used (for example, HTTP server in a website) must pass through the proxy server before being sent to the service, mostly in unencrypted form. It is therefore possible, as has been demonstrated, for a malicious proxy server to record everything sent to the proxy: including unencrypted logins and passwords.

By chaining proxies which do not reveal data about the original requester, it is possible to obfuscate activities from the eyes of the user's destination. However, more traces will be left on the intermediate hops, which could be used or offered up to trace the user's activities. If the policies and administrators of these other proxies are unknown, the user may fall victim to a false sense of security just because those details are out of sight and mind.

The bottom line of this is to be wary when using proxy servers, and only use proxy servers of known integrity (e.g., the owner is known and trusted, has a clear privacy policy, etc.), and never use proxy servers of unknown integrity. If there is no choice but to use unknown proxy servers, do not pass any private information (unless it is properly encrypted) through the proxy.

In what is more of an inconvenience than a risk, proxy users may find themselves being blocked from certain Web sites, as numerous forums and Web sites block IP addresses from proxies known to have spammed or trolled the site.