Prompt's TechBlog

The web is buzzing this week about recent developments in Viacom's $1b lawsuit against Google for copyright infringement. Viacom alleges that many of its videos are illegally hosted on Google's YouTube, garnering over 1.5 billion page views and taking away potential profits for the video producer. A copyright lawsuit against YouTube is nothing new, but this story took a surprising twist last week when the judge ordered Google to provide Viacom with the viewing history and IP addresses of every user.

To put it simply: this is a ridiculous and frightening precedent. Google has been asked to provide personal information on its users to a third party. If this order holds up then many future cases will cite Viacom vs. Google to gain personal data, rendering the "personal" aspect of it completely worthless. And on a more immediately startling level: Viacom can dig through the IP addresses to find out which users have watched copyrighted content and subsequently sue them.

As a pretty heavy YouTube user myself, this is pretty scary. Not because I know I've watched copyrighted material, but because I don't necessarily know. As YouTube makes no distinction of content, so it's never something I've thought to avoid. I just browse videos and if something interesting comes up, I'll watch it and there has never been a warning of potentially illegal content. Viacom could pull my IP out, determine that my computer was used to watch a clip from one of its shows, and then sue me.

So please Viacom, don't turn this into an RIAA-like suing spree, do the right thing by leaving the end users alone. Even more optimistically: hopefully this order will be overturned and our personal information remains personal.

Labels: privacy, video, youtube

Aieee! Everyone hide if you value your privacy - Google cars have reached Britain. The camera-equipped black cars have been seen on the streets of London, snapping photos for Google's Street View project.

Google Street View lets users see photos of any street in a surveyed area. Google has been facing down protests and complaints over the photo-mapping tool as of late. The problem is that many people are unsure as to the legality of what Google is doing. The images often contains people or private property and many question if this constitutes an invasion of privacy. A couple in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania sued Google over photographs of their swimming pool, and now the organisation is under fire from UK group Privacy International.

The BBC reports that the surveillance and privacy watchdog is concerned that Street View could breach data protection laws if people's faces are shown. Google assures people that it will use face blurring technology to preserve the identity of individuals captured in the photos. Privacy International is unconvinced that the face-blurring will work and wants Google to reveal details of the technology. If Google does not comply, Privacy International will ask the UK Information Commissioner to get involved. Google has responded by pointing out that the technology has been deployed in the US already, and it works pretty well.

Personally, sarcastic introduction aside, I don't have a problem with Street View. From what I have seen the face blurring seems to work well enough, and so long as all photos are taken in a public space, then its fine with me.

And not everyone is concerned about privacy, as the woman in this revealing Street View image proves.

Labels: google, privacy, Street View

Digital tech companies like Phorm have been causing a stir for a while now with their newfangled approaches to online advertising. With software lurking on your ISP's network, they can potentially record keywords on webpages you visit and then use this information to target adverts at you.

While it stinks when this is done on the sly (BT reportedly secretly tested Phorm's technology last year), if people know what's involved when they sign up to a new ISP, then I don't see a huge problem with it. Push all of those concerns over internet regulation and online privacy to one side and what you're left with is a rather handy personal shopping service. I think that sounds great.

I frequently find myself distracted when I'm in the middle of doing something important on my computer. As a person of short memory, once I've answered my phone, rescued burning food or been compelled to rid the world of zombies on my 360, I've totally forgotten what I was doing beforehand. To have train-related adverts pop up and remind me that I was booking train tickets strikes me as useful.

Plus, don't people love those sites/lists that recommend things you might like? For, example, 'If you like Maeve Binchy, you might also like these other titles with cottage gardens on the front and swirly handwriting to denote title...' Surely, targeted advertising is just another version of this type of service - in a 'if you clicked on this website, you might also like to click on this other website' kind of way. Click or don't click, it's still your choice.

Labels: e-commerce, privacy

The BBC reports that Google has dramatically shortened the life the cookies it issues, from 31 years to 2 years.

Cookies are small text files that websites can put on a user's computer so the user can be identified when he or she looks at different pages on the site or returns to the site later. It's what makes it possible to visit Amazon on different days to tinker with your wishlist without having to log in again, and what enables you to pop in and out of ebay all Saturday without repeatedly logging in to bid.

Privacy advocates have been concerned about how long Google tracks people for, and the data it holds. If you want a mild fright, try logging in to Google and viewing your web history. Unless you've specifically opted out, Google will have kept a record of everything you've searched for and all the sites you've visited while logged in to your Google account.

The cookie potentially enables Google to track your activity across websites that host Google adverts or use Google for visitor tracking, which represents a lot of the internet.

So Google's representing this cut of 31 years in the cookie life as a big deal. But it's not really because if you use a Google service, the counter is reset. The cookie only ever expires if you don't use Google Search, Blogger, Gmail, Adwords, Adsense, Reader or any other Google service for two whole years. And if you have a one-off engagement with Google, it'll reserve the right to track you for two whole years afterwards.

Google says it wants to stop people from having to log in all the time, but most people would consider once a month or once a week to be reasonable. Indeed, ebay users must provide their password once a day.

This announcement appears to do a lot more to improve Google's public relations profile than it does to actually change how it uses personal data.

Labels: google, privacy