Have you ever watched Youtube?

[Keith]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7420955.stm

Just been announced that Viacom have won. US court has ordered Google (owners of Youtube) to pass to Viacom every log on/i.p. address of every viewing of every video on Youtube... EVER!

Okay, ip address on its own will not lead directly to most individuals without the cooperation of ISP's but with Virgin Media writing to warn (scare) anyone who has been involved in 'file sharing' (Lime Wire etc) that they were acting illegally, and you can see the free for all of the internet is going to come to an end as the policing gets stronger.

[USA Shrimp]

What are they going to do with those IPs ? Are they trying to say that anybody who even watched a piece of copyrighted material on YouTube was committing an unlawful act?

[Aspers]

As long as they don't tell the missus about youporn.

[Phoenix]

What are they going to do with those IPs ? Are they trying to say that anybody who even watched a piece of copyrighted material on YouTube was committing an unlawful act?

My guess would be they are building cases against those who put the videos online. One of their facts would be how many people watched them. Let's say a TV channel has 100,000 subscribers in the USA and 200,000 people watched one of their programmes on youtube, they would claim loss of possible revenue from the extra 100,000 youtube viewers.

I'd already decided to quite virgin media when I reach contract minimum term in a few months. They monitor useage weekly and throttle your internet connection speed for a week if you use it too much the previous week. Not bad for an "unlimited" contract which I pay extra for. Backing up my web sites more than once a week goes over their useage limit as I keep finding out then it's too slow the following week to be able to back the sites up.

[Keith]

I'd agree with Pheonix's guess as to 'why' they want the info, I don't think it would be of value to chase individuals... yet! I thought it was interesting that they only started the lawsuit once Youtube were bought by Google. When they were a small company, they didn't bother!

[Phoenix]

According to the reports I read, Viacom tried but the small company just ignored them unlike Google who replied to their requests which eventually saw it go to court.

[HALMA 1983]

What and miss classics like this

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=a3pkbqAflv0

How I love that fella going on about the 'Streaky'