Google makes big news two days running; on one side being sued for copyright infringement, and the second for assisting users privacy. Here is my breakdown of the two articles:
Viacom sues, YouTube (and Google), for copyrighted video clips
Viacom inc. (the owners of MTV and comedy Central) is suing YouTube (Google) for $1 billion, claiming copyright infringement. Aside from this being a ridiculous amount of money it will also put the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) ‘safe harbour’ clause under the microscope.
YouTube has so far not implemented any copyright detection systems into it’s video service, but has always removed copyrighted content at the request of the owner timeously, even when Viacom labelled some videos copyrighted ‘Viacom’ when in fact they belonged to other parties.
Google seems firm in it’s stance that they and YouTube are within their legal rights with regard to copyrights.
On the flip side of the coin, Google has been praised by privacy groups for it’s move to make users search information anonymous. Currently Google keeps user search information (IP address, cookie info and search string text) indefinitely; with this announcement Google says that any information that they have no legal obligation to keep (like say ‘how to Commit Murder’), will be, anonymised, after 18 to 24 months.
Currently the only criticism of this move by the web search engine is the time that they do keep the information.
For me, Google seems to own my life, a little anonymity wont hurt a bit.