Jason Bogovich

The electronic frontier foundation is not happy, and neither are most people who will not have one of the most litigious corporations browsing through their private lives and the judge didn’t even give the matter any analysis according to the EFF.

Court Ruling Will Expose Viewing Habits of YouTube Users.

The court’s order grants Viacom’s request and erroneously ignores the protections of the federal Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), and threatens to expose deeply private information about what videos are watched by YouTube users. The VPPA passed after a newspaper disclosed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork’s video rental records. As Congress recognized, your selection of videos to watch is deeply personal and deserves the strongest protection.

They issued this statement, arguing like Google that the VPPA act, although passed for analog technology definitely was passed to protect the viewing privacy of our citizens, and that it needs to be up held. Google has been a pretty good steward of user’s data, and it fights these sorts of judge rulings, where as Microsoft in the past (for instance) has quickly turned over any material, without double guessing the privacy ramifications.