Viacom And Google Reach Deal Regarding User Privacy

It seems Google and Viacom have come to an agreement with regard to the disclosure of YouTube’s user histories following the last couple of weeks of controversy surrounding the issue.

According to the Wall Street Journal, YouTube this morning announced that Viacom had agreed to allow Google to anonymize the data before handing it over in a move which will hopefully relax users and privacy groups who were previously unhappy with such data being passed around. YouTube said that it had been agreed that Google substitute actual user and visitor IDs and IP addresses with other unique values to protect users.

Earlier in the month it emerged that a court ruling had ordered Google to hand over all YouTube user histories. Viacom claimed that by studying this data the company could prove more users used the video sharing site for watching copyrighted material than posting home movies or clips for friends and family to see.

Google claimed this was a violation of users’ privacy and it wasn’t long before users were voicing their own opinions on YouTube. The weekend of July 4th saw numerous videos posted on the site denouncing Viacom’s actions against Google and its subsidiary and encouraging other users to boycott the media company and its affiliates, which produce many popular shows.

There were several Boycott Viacom websites with most users being of the opinion that Viacom had every right to ask Google to remove copyrighted material but its attempts to obtain user data were crossing a certain line.