Millions of YouTube enthusiasts - including many in Singapore - should be relieved the video-sharing website's owner Google has to hand over only anonymised viewer logs in media giant Viacom's US$1 billion copyright lawsuit.
Viacom and other plaintiffs may be suing only for payment of fair value of their content YouTube has made freely available online. They may have no wish to go after individual uploaders or viewers.
Another, less obvious, motive might be that the usage data may come in handy in carving out their own online video market share and in boosting their own advertising revenues. Stripping out users' names and their Internet protocol addresses from the evidence allows the plaintiffs a chance to prove their case without compromising US privacy protection law.
In welcoming the compromise, nevertheless, Web surfers would do well to realise that online privacy and copyrights are legal issues that are still evolving, in the United States and other jurisdictions.
Singaporeans have only to recall the legal action the company Odex brought in the past year to see that surfing the Net is not totally free from privacy and piracy pitfalls. The firm, distributor of Japanese cartoons called anime, obtained court orders requiring SingNet and StarHub to reveal the identities of 2,000 subscribers by tracing their IP addresses captured when they allegedly downloaded cartoons illegally. At least 100 settled last year.
On an appeal that six Japanese studios - owners of copyrights - joined earlier this year, the High Court ordered a third service provider, Pacific Internet, to identify other offending downloaders. The success in court seemed to make clear that those who access copyrighted online content cannot claim a right to privacy.
This time Google managed to avoid a public relations debacle over users' privacy in forestalling Viacom's initial demand. Next time a service provider may not be as able or as willing to resist when privacy rights come up against copyrights.
The US music industry, for example, continues successfully to track down and sue people exchanging tunes online illegally. Still, many legal questions remain unsettled, such as the method and extent of IP address detection and disclosure, the role and responsibility of service providers versus the interests of copyright owners, and the possibility of use of confidential information unrelated to litigation.
Until such issues are resolved in a way acceptable or at least tolerable to everyone, surfers should read the usage fine print on websites and remain circumspect about risks of exposure and legal trouble.
