The James Kilgour BlogA Life Blog.

YouTube. One of the most popular video sharing websites on the net, receiving millions of hits every week.

Viacom, owner of Paramount Pictures, with a turnover of over $13 billion per year however, isn’t happy. Thousands of videos owned by themselves are available to watch free on the site, illegally.  In early July, a consortium of media companies headed by Viacom demanded the full user history of every YouTube visitor from Google, (who own the site). The demands upset privacy activists, who have demanded for it not to happen.

Now, Viacom has backed down, asking now only for fully anonymous data. In my opinion, this should have been the only option to be considered. We live in a world priding itself on free speech and privacy; which this case fundamentally breaks. Of course, Viacom has full rights to royalties from the media it owns, although by compromising the end user, who in many cases may be naive to the legality of the videos, should not be persecuted or have their rights infringed. It should be the duty of YouTube to better filter and moderate their sites for the content. Presently, they allow the content, and make no conscious effort to remove it. Shouldn’t they be the only ones to be punished, not us?

Full story here.

JK