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On July 1, 2008, the federal district
court in New York City dismissed YouTube's privacy concerns as speculative and
ordered the video-sharing website to give Viacom full access to its viewer logs
in connection with a $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit brought by Viacom
and others against YouTube. However, Viacom and other plaintiffs signed an
agreement on July 14 to allow YouTube to mask user IDs and Internet addresses
when viewership records are handed over pursuant to the court's order. The
masked database will still have to let the plaintiffs determine which individual
watched which clip and when, but the records will cloak cases in which an
existing identifier contains personally identifiable information, such as first
initial and full last name in a user ID. YouTube was given one week to propose
its method for masking the identities of its users.
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text documents and other materials provided to subscribers of
the CCH
Copyright
Law Reports....)
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