Google Faces 'Privacy Gate'

The fighters who defend privacy have begun to attack Google. In recent years, Google has collected a large amount of user personal information through its search engine, video site (YouTube), and e-mail (Gmail). This move is nothing short of a large-scale invasion of the public domain. However, whether this attack can completely make Google back off remains undecided.

On Wednesday, Judge Louis L. Stanton of the Manhattan District Court accepted the case against Google, urging Google to quickly provide the involved users' (numbering in the tens of thousands) data from YouTube to Viacom. These YouTube users are suspected of uploading infringing videos, and they may face $1 billion in damages for copyright infringement. Viacom hopes to use the data to prove that the number of views of infringing videos on YouTube far exceeds those of non-infringing videos.

This case has once again brought privacy issues under the spotlight, with many bloggers using it as a topic. Lawyer Kurt Opsahl of the Electronic Frontier Foundation believes that these YouTube users have violated the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), exposing their privacy to all users of YouTube, which is not fair at all. Long-time commentator on Google, Danny Sullivan, thinks there is no such thing as privacy on YouTube, and Judge Stanton is making a mountain out of a molehill. In fact, Stanton's approach clearly cannot fundamentally solve the issue of violating privacy rights. According to the data provided by Viacom, Google...