YouScrewed: Please don't be evil, Google

No NYT link on this story, since Ars Technica beat them to the punch.

Remember that $1 billion lawsuit Viacom filed against YouTube, and by extension, Google? Well, a big ruling just came down. No, not a verdict, of course, the case has been going for only about a year, now. The verdict in question specifies what information Viacom is entitled to as part of the discovery process.

The judge denied some of the more absurd requests (all of Google's source code, YouTube's source code, every private video ever uploaded). Unfortunately, Viacom is still getting plenty to make mischief with.

Viacom is entitled to receive a copy of every video removed for any reason (be it porn or piracy) to make the case that YouTube is not just a safe harbor for piracy, but rather is fueled by them. The second concession is worse:

A 12TB database containing logging information on every video ever watched at YouTube. The database will also show which username and IP address watched every video, a move with potential privacy implications.

Leaving aside the fairly likely possibility that Viacom, like RIAA, will use this information to sue and settle with users who viewed pirated content, this concession would be a substantial violation of the users' privacy. The videos an 'anonymous' user watches should not be tabulated and turned over. This concession will curtail viewings and creativity on sharing websites if every view is logged and may come back to haunt you. Employers already peruse Facebook profiles, information that is willingly uploaded by users. Making it possible to request viewing logs without reason is a step in the wrong direction. Google should appeal and defy this order.

Science Tuesday: Standards Set by Communities Deeds Freak Out Community

When jurors are asked to determine if the defendent in an obsenity trial has "violated community standards," they are seldom given a definite heuristic to evaluate these standards. But in one case in Florida, the defence is arguing that community standards are nothing more than behavior that is standard for the community and has found a novel way to assess these behaviors.

Rather than showing broad availability of sex-related Web sites, he is trying to show both accessibility and interest in the material within the jurisdiction of the First Circuit Court for Santa Rosa County, where the trial is taking place.

The search data he is using is available through a service called Google Trends (trends.google.com). It allows users to compare search trends in a given area, showing, for instance, that residents of Pensacola are more likely to search for sexual terms than some more wholesome ones.

“We tried to come up with comparison search terms that would embody typical American values,” Mr. Walters said. “What is more American than apple pie?” But according to the search service, he said, “people are at least as interested in group sex and orgies as they are in apple pie.”

The idea of community morals being determined by the average morality of the community is sort of frightning. The lowest-common-denominator morality this seems to promote is hardly what we should aspire to. Laws don't exist to enforce or create guidelines for moral action, but rather to regulate behavior that infringes inappropriately on the choices and actions of others. The real danger is that having a better picture of what we are will promote moral complacency. The actions of others have nothing to do with guides to moral behavior.