TechBloggin.com

The recent court order directing Google to hand over data to Viacom about every YouTube video ever watched strikes many people as an absurd overreach of the law into the privacy of anyone who has ever used YouTube (i.e., almost everyone on the Internet). Google should definitely keep fighting the ruling if it can.

But if it can’t, perhaps it should comply with it in a creative way. The data in question are data logs containing the records of every video watched on YouTube, by whom, and at what times. The court is also ordering that Google hand over all videos that have ever been taken down for any reason. The logs alone take up 12 terabytes. Google should print them out and deliver them on paper.

It would literally fill up the Library of Congress. That is roughly the equivalent of all the printed books in the Library of Congress (by one estimate, others put it at 20 terabytes—either way, it’s a lot of paper). The court order never states what form, the data must be delivered in.

(Photo via, appropriately enough, the Library of Congress And hat tip to reader Paul Christiansen for the original suggestion).
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: Erick Schonfeld

written by

The ongoing Google/YouTube-Viacom litigation has now officially spilled over to users with a court order requiring Google to turn over massive amounts of user data to Viacom. If the data is actually released, the consequences could be far more serious than the 2006 AOL Search debacle.

Louis L. Stanton, the senior judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, issued the opinion and order, which is here (PDF).

That data includes every YouTube username, the associated IP address and the videos that user has watched on YouTube. Google will also be required to hand over copies of every video removed from Youtube for any reason (DMCA notices or user-initiated deletions). Stanton dismissed Google’s argument that the order will violate user privacy, saying such privacy concerns are merely “speculative.”

Meanwhile, the judge denied Viacom’s request that Google turn over YouTube’s source code as it could “cause catastrophic competitive harm to Google by sharing them with others who might create their own programs without making the same investment.”

I can understand why Judge Stanton, who graduated from law school in 1955, may be completely and utterly clueless when it comes to online video services. But perhaps one of his bright young clerks or interns could have told him that (1) handing over user names and a list of videos they’ve watched to a highly litigious copyright holder is extremely likely to result in lawsuits against those users that have watched copyrighted content on YouTube, and (2) YouTube’s source code is about as valuable as the hard drive it would be delivered on, since the core Flash technology is owned by Adobe and there are countless YouTube clones out there, most of which offer higher quality video.

YouTube’s core value is in it’s network effect - the library of content along with its massive user base.

The privacy fallout of this ruling is spectacular. The EFF has already chimed in, noting that the order is highly likely to be in violation of federal law.

Judge Stanton doesn’t seem to care much about that law, for now. And he clearly doesn’t understand that far more data is being transferred than is necessary to comply with Viacom’s core stated concern, which is to understand the popularity of copyright infringing v. non-infringing material. Viacom has asked for far more data than that, and there’s only one use for that data: to sue individual users (or shake them down via the threat of lawsuit, which has been perfected by the RIAA) who have watched a few music videos or television shows on YouTube.

I say this with the utmost respect, but Judge Stanton is a moron. And Google simply cannot hand this data over without facing a class action lawsuit of staggering proportions.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: Michael Arrington

written by

When it comes to market share gains in advertising dollars, Google outstripped every other media company in 2007, whether you look at the Web, TV, print, or radio. Earlier this morning, Henry Blodget compared the advertising revenues of 17 major media businesses (including News Corp, Time Warner Cable, Viacom, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL,, the New York Times, and CBS Radio). He left out Disney for some reason, but otherwise it’s a pretty good set of data (see the spreadsheet here). According to his calculations, total online ad revenues across these 17 companies grew 9% last year, online revenues grew 28% (versus 3% for offline ad revenues), and Google’s online ad revenues grew 44% (versus 15% for the combined online ad revenues of Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL).

But let’s take a deeper dive into these numbers. Google added $2.6 billion in advertising revenues last year. Next in line and far behind was News Corp., which grew its ad revenues by $915 million. To better visualize how much Google is creaming every other media company, I put together the charts above and below (click on them to see a larger version). And here’s a table with each company’s ad-revenue gains (or declines), in descending order:

Now, what about absolute market share? Google does pretty well there too, with 14.9% of the total $58 billion represented by all 17 businesses. That is up from an 11.3% market share in 2006, and makes Google No. 2 behind News Corp’s 16.5% market share. (No.3, actually, behind Time Warner, but Blodget separated Time Warner Cable, Time Inc., and AOL, which combined would have a 15.2% market share).

Looking at the absolute numbers in the pie chart and table below really helps you put these businesses in perspective. For instance, check out Yahoo in the No. 4 spot, with $4.7 billion in ad revenues last year. It is right behind newspaper company Gannett, which is still a cash cow, but saw its advertising dollars decline by $338 million last year. Yahoo, in contrast gained $361 million in ad revenues. That’s still a fraction of Google’s growth, but looking at the absolute numbers let’s you see why Microsoft wants to buy it. A combined Yahoo-Microsoft would be No. 3 on this list.

And here are the underlying numbers:

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: Erick Schonfeld

written by

In another move to strengthen the anti-YouTube coalition, Viacom is syndicating its videos (from Comedy Central, MTV Networks, Nickelodeon, and Atom Films, among other properties) to a whole new slew of video-sharing Websites. The new recipients of Viacom’s video love are Dailymotion, Veoh (which already has Hulu and CBS videos), imeem, GoFish, and MeeVee. They join AOL, Bebo, Joost, MSN, and Comcast’s Fancast in gaining access to Viacom’s video library.

Viacom obviously wants to strengthen the hand of other video Websites against Youtube by spreading its videos everywhere except on YouTube. Viacom has a $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube for copyright infringement and yanked its videos from the site last year. As Comedy Central’s own Jon Stewart said last night regarding his parent company’s lawsuit against YouTube, “A billion dollars? What are they four-year olds?”

I’ve embedded the clip below (which is mostly about the Hollywood writer’s strike) from The Daily Show’s Website. The comment is about four minutes in:

DailyMotion

Loading information about DailyMotion…

Veoh

Loading information about Veoh…

Imeem

Loading information about Imeem…

MeeVee

Loading information about MeeVee…

cb_widget_report_widget(”cb_widget_1199887943″); cb_widget_report_element(”cb_widget_0_1199887943″,”dailymotion”); cb_widget_report_element(”cb_widget_1_1199887943″,”veoh”); cb_widget_report_element(”cb_widget_2_1199887943″,”imeem”); cb_widget_report_element(”cb_widget_3_1199887943″,”meevee”);
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: Erick Schonfeld

written by

As we noted earlier, the FTC has indeed cleared Google’s $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick. Notably, the FTC required no conditions for clearing the transaction, which is a big win for Google. It won’t have to sell off any businesses or change any of its current business practices. Google’s chief legal officer David Drummond gives a rundown of the reasoning behind the FTC’s decision:

Third party ad serving markets are highly competitive. [No argument there].

Privacy not a part of the merger review. [You lucked out, boys].

Data combination wouldn’t pose problems. [That means Google won’t be hobbled by any separate-but-equal clauses keeping Google and DoubleClick data apart, which would have probably squirreled the deal].

Advertisers and publishers aren’t concerned. [Well, at least not enough to complain publicly about it to the FTC].

Now that the U.S. is cleared, Google still has its toughest hurdle ahead. The European Commission won’t bow out so easily. It could very well delay a decision until April. (Those Old World regulators like to take things at an Old World pace). In the meantime, Microsoft will keep trying to steal away more business from DoubleClick, as it did yesterday with its Viacom deal. Oh, and it will be spending a lot of time lobbying its good friends at the EC as well. The longer the delay, the more Microsoft can use that time to try to catch up. But come April, DoubleGoog will start to punch back.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: Erick Schonfeld

written by