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No Google source code for Viacom, just 12TB of YouTube data

arstechnica.com — As part of the discovery process in its $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube, Viacom asked for an astonishing array of information: the source code for the search functions that power Google and YouTube, the source code for YouTube's new "Video ID" program, a complete set of every video ever removed from the site, databases containing information on

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str8lazy, on 07/03/2008, -2/+81Sounds like a fishing expedition to me, are they going to attempt to prosecute those who uploaded materials that they have copyrighted? It just seems like there sound be legal provisions in place that wouldn't allow for this type of action. It would seem as if the contents of the search and how the searches are conducted are the intellectual property of Google & Youtube. Intellectual property is something that I wouldn't want a media company like Viacom to get their hands on. Thats just my two cents.
- zyklon, on 07/04/2008, -1/+36I struggle to find the words that describe my hatred for Viacom. You KNOW some arsehole is sitting in his office at Viacom saying something to the tune of "Yeah, like we're the bad guys".
- MildApplause, on 07/04/2008, -1/+13I'll use google to find out all of what Viacom owns so I can boycott it.
  - triad203, on 07/04/2008, -1/+2good luck with that
  - Acglaphotis, on 07/04/2008, -2/+10This is a list of what they own:
    
    *
  - superaktieboy, on 07/04/2008, -0/+6Here ya go:
    
    MEDIA NETWORKS
    BET NETWORKS
    BET
    BET J
    MTV NETWORKS
    ATOMFILMS
    ADDICTINGGAMES
    CMT
    COMEDY CENTRAL
    GAMETRAILERS
    HARMONIX
    LOGO
    MTV
    MTV2
    MTVN INTERNATIONAL
    MTVU
    MTV TR3S
    NEOPETS
    NICKELODEON - NICK JR.
    NICK AT NITE
    NOGGIN
    PARENTSCONNECT
    QUIZILLA
    RHAPSODY
    SHOCKWAVE
    SPIKE TV
    THE N
    TV LAND
    VH1
    VH1 CLASSIC
    VH1 SOUL
    VIRTUAL WORLDS
    XFIRE
    FILMED ENTERTAINMENT
    PARAMOUNT PICTURES CORP
    PARAMOUNT PICTURES
    DREAMWORKS STUDIOS
    PARAMOUNT VANTAGE
    MTV FILMS
    NICKELODEON MOVIES
    HOME ENTERTAINMENT
    GLOBAL REACH
    BRAND INDEX
    
    copied and pasted straight from viacom's website (http://www.viacom.com/ourbrands/Pages/default.aspx ) .. i just hope im not infringing any copyright by copying and pasting this part..
- Uiaccsk, on 07/04/2008, -2/+10They own everything, my friend. Boycott EVERYTHING.
- DarkHuntress, on 07/04/2008, -3/+1This is a serious breach of trust between YouTube and it's users. It is a huge violation of privacy exploited by Viacom. Everyone should not only be concerned but also getting involved. The email address of those involved in this are all over the internet. Email, call and let them know how you feel. First it's YouTube, what's next? I can't not believe that we will be passive on this. This action is setting the tone for the future of the Internet. Get involved please!!
  - Atomic1fire, on 07/04/2008, -0/+4Not a breach of trust
    Its court ruling
    Youtube could be worse off if they dont
    depending on if the court ruling goes
  - superaktieboy, on 07/04/2008, -1/+0agreed... viacom really needs to stop, i mean if YouTube wasn't trying to removed copyrighted material, then fine, i guess it's kind of okay.. but YouTube is doing quite a lot about this.. besides what if i accidentally clicked on link to copyrighted material?... this is just ridiculous..
- known, on 07/04/2008, -3/+2Open Source Software Promotes Competition in Businesses.
  Closed Source Software Promotes Collusion in Businesses.
killbert24, on 07/03/2008, -2/+125"The data set is large, but the judge noted that it could be slapped on three "over-the-shelf" 4TB drives."
Last time I checked, there weren't any 4TB hard drives. The largest "over-the-shelf" drive I can find is 1TB. This means that the data set would need to be slapped onto twelve 1TB drives.
- MavRevMatt, on 07/03/2008, -2/+110He's a judge. You've read the decisions about tech related cases and they don't know ***** about what they're deciding on.
  - striker1211, on 07/04/2008, -2/+30To a judge a TB=GB and clicking "connect to unsecured network"=hacking. Im sure he was thinking of 4GB Flash drives.
  - ufia, on 07/04/2008, -1/+384TB = 4 Tablespoon
    
    The judge won't know any better, go Google, do it!
  - 0xbaadf00d, on 07/04/2008, -0/+10Well he doesn't seem to be a complete idiot, anyway.
    
    "The code is ``a critical trade secret,'' according to Stanton. Disclosure could cause ``catastrophic competitive harm'' to Google, the most-used Internet search engine, he said.
    
    ``YouTube and Google should not be made to place this vital asset in hazard merely to allay speculation,'' Stanton wrote in his opinion. He said he wanted ``a plausible showing'' that the code can identify infringing works before he'd require it to be turned over."
- Derelict267, on 07/04/2008, -16/+8http://www.nextag.com/4-tb-hard-drive/search-html
  - rald84, on 07/04/2008, -1/+28from looking at the pics and also checking newegg, those 4TB drives are external boxes housing four 1TB drives in RAID.
  - aussieNickuss, on 07/04/2008, -0/+25"4TB hard drive arrays" NOT "4TB hard drive"
- DifferentAngle, on 07/04/2008, -9/+0To be fair, he probably asked someone else how big current harddrives are. Not everyone is an ubergeek and keeps up on the latest in harddrive technology. He's probably out getting laid and stuff.
  - xino, on 07/04/2008, -0/+7It may suprise you, but it's possible to get laid and know that the largest hard drive today is 1TB.
- FutureGuy, on 07/04/2008, -5/+13So what was Google doing with 12TB of user histroy data? If Google didn't have a policy of storing user data almost for every they wouldn't have anything to turn in.
  - cankillar, on 07/04/2008, -3/+31Look at your youtube logged-in page. Do you have favorites? Subscriptions? Comments on other's videos? Ratings? Comments on your videos? You also have login information, # of videos watched, uploaded, total views, and time spent logged in. Numerous other variables are kept for your benefit. If google didn't keep these facts for you to look at, youtube wouldn't be of much use or interest. 12TB seems pretty low, since youtube is, what, the second most visited site among alexa users?
    
    I made a program that stored information about employees at a company for a school project. You couldn't even guess how many hidden variables there are for something as simple as that.
  - aussieNickuss, on 07/04/2008, -11/+4@ cankillar
    
    All that info would be stored as text, so to me, 12TB seems like an enormous amount of data. If 12TB is the size of the data after it has been compressed, than that is even worse.
  - Amablue, on 07/04/2008, -0/+5According to wikipedia, "more than 100 million videos were being watched every day, and 2.5 billion videos were watched in June 2006. 50,000 videos were being added per day in May 2006, and this increased to 65,000 by July.In January 2008 alone, nearly 79 million users had made over 3 billion video views."
    With all that data being thrown around, with 79 million users with history pages and comments and with so many billions of videos being watched, it's not a huge stretch to see how they could accumulate 12 TB of data
- Ronars, on 07/04/2008, -13/+1have you met my friend the quotation mark? it is used to mark down things like conversations and exaggerations. a 4TB 'over the shelf' drive means a drive that high tech companies like, oh I don't know, Youtube or Google, can get to host their dozens of TB of stuff. These things exist, they're just at the corner of 'too expensive to produce feasibly' and 'available for multimillion dollar corporations only'
  
  In a year or two you'll find them actually over the shelf, albeit for stupid high prices - and at that point, your argument will be even more moot.
  - admdrew, on 07/04/2008, -0/+6>These things exist, they're just at the corner of 'too expensive to produce feasibly' and 'available for multimillion dollar corporations only'
    Um, what? No, these things aren't available for multimillion dollar corporations because they're imaginary.
- wibambau, on 07/04/2008, -0/+7They should just stream it.
- atgmac, on 07/04/2008, -4/+8He meant something like this:
  http://www.lacie.com/uk/products/product.htm?pid=1 ...
  
  It's a 4TB *external drive* which is made up of 4x 1TB internal hard disks.
mediaspree, on 07/03/2008, -3/+83Big corporations piss me off. Don't they understand its free advertising? If you produce quality content people will come watch your show on TV then show it all their friends on youtube who may then become fans of your show. Course then they'll just tivo it and skip the commercials. But I digress.
- reed311, on 07/04/2008, -3/+8I understand what you are saying, but there is no proof that this leads to increased ratings or advertising revenue. TV shows/studios don't make any money unless they sell advertising (and to a lesser extent DVD's). Regardless, they have the exclusive right to say how their shows are viewed. I mean, would you call it free advertising if NBC decided to show episodes of Lost? Of course not! Youtube is just another medium and they are making money off of other people's work and the creators of that content are due just compensation.
  - supermansuper, on 07/04/2008, -7/+3Thanks for being the sole voice of reason. I was wondering if I was the only one who saw this whole thing from the other side.
    This is a clear case of Google leeching off of Viacom's copyrighted material. I am not taking sides here, but I do see why Viacom is pissed of at Google. Its their content, they decide who gets to money out of it.
  - Atomic1fire, on 07/04/2008, -0/+5Google is hosting a service,
    while google does follow the law where it can
    the one thing it cant prevent is copyright infridgement due to the intentions of others
    what big companies should start doing is make more media available under advertising and create places for people to discuss that media
    creating official fan groups would allow them to see where the fans are and what they like which could also be used for more advertising
  - supermansuper, on 07/04/2008, -0/+1Google wants to make money out of Youtube. They want a lot of people to visit the site so that they can serve up ads to them. How come they remove all the porn videos immediately, while they cannot do so with copyrighted videos? They remove porn promptly because it would harm their reputation resulting in getting blocked by parents or corporations. Which means lesser visitors, hence lesser ad views/clicks and hence lesser money.
    But copyrighted videos only benefit them, they dont bother to act on it promptly. It would attract more visitors, hence more ads, hence more money.
- CarStan, on 07/04/2008, -1/+4Last time i checked, the most watched channel on YT was universalmusic, leading every other channel by a huge margin.With MTV showing nearly any music anymore, the internet is the best way to promote your artists. Not even talking about making word-to-mouth much easier, you can send your friends links to songs you like, instead of saying: have you seen this new vid on MTV?
  Same goes for TV: With small snippets or whole eps of a show on youtube you can find shows you like much easier. And if you like a show you found on YT, chances are you try to catch it on TV the next time its on, or even want to try to buy the DVD.
  
  What really bugs them seems to be that Google is making all advertising revenue from YT, because the big ass companys were to lazy to catch up with the internets.
FuryOfThor, on 07/03/2008, -3/+59Suck it, Viacom!
WatchDoit, on 07/03/2008, -6/+23YES! GO GOOGLE!
- alanr19, on 07/04/2008, -1/+1Uhhh didn't you read the story? Google LOST. Who gives a rats ass about the source code. I don't. Its the personal information of every user that important.
  
  Arstechnica is a well known google shill that is trying to spin this story into some kind of victory for google and the end user.
  
  Absolute fail on the part of google and the justice system.
  
  The headline might as well be "No display-case for Viacom, just the crown jewels"
  - theaceoffire, on 07/04/2008, -1/+1Google hasn't lost yet, this is just the discovery part where they both get ready for the case.
kevinmotel, on 07/03/2008, -1/+403google should send it on 3.5" floppy disks
- maldovix, on 07/04/2008, -1/+184A pile large enough to be seen from space.
  
  Edit: just did the math out of curiosity, it's about 270 tons of floppy disks
  
  Edit 2: And laid end to end would stretch about 700 miles
  - bumblefoot, on 07/04/2008, -0/+59dugg up for two facts i didn't know before reading,
    
    seriously good work sir
  - arunforce, on 07/04/2008, -0/+52Would you be interested in doing my math?
  - Oryx, on 07/04/2008, -0/+8That's a little more than half a megapound... doesn't sound THAT large that way
- MelvinSchlubman, on 07/04/2008, -2/+555.25"
- JarJar420, on 07/04/2008, -17/+1Meesa used to have a 8" floppy disk but threw it away :(
  - htan, on 07/04/2008, -2/+11fag
  - pinchies, on 07/04/2008, -0/+1You are trying too hard.
- Lordy1952, on 07/04/2008, -3/+175.25 disks even better
- rald84, on 07/04/2008, -1/+94punch cards ftw.
  - VitriolAndAngst, on 07/04/2008, -1/+41Oooh -- that would be perfect.
    And of course, encrypted punch cards.
  - ddaw735, on 07/04/2008, -1/+9How the hell do you encrypt a punch card?
  - Anakashar, on 07/04/2008, -0/+33Flip it over.
- Firehed, on 07/04/2008, -2/+98Preferably in a single zip spanning 10 million disks. All unlabeled.
  - wiifm69, on 07/04/2008, -0/+68Corrupt the last floppy disk in the set. Mur hahaha
  - ayeroxor, on 07/04/2008, -0/+22Compression method: Store
- tama00, on 07/04/2008, -1/+32then send each floppy to them via carrier pidgins.
  - ByteGuerilla, on 07/04/2008, -0/+9Or IP Over Avian Carrier: http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2549.html
  - jordn, on 07/04/2008, -2/+2Hopefully they'll fly over my house- Where I'll gun them down for infringement on my property.
  - ayeroxor, on 07/04/2008, -1/+3You don't own the air over your house. That was cleared for air travel decades ago.
- grantmoore3d, on 07/04/2008, -0/+44Or print it using an old Dot Matrix printer.... SSCCCCccreeeeeeaaaaacccchhhh X billion
  - admdrew, on 07/04/2008, -1/+6Wow, that's exactly how that sound is spelled.
- sarahbrand, on 07/04/2008, -15/+6Low-quality JPGs of one letter at a time, in completely random order.
- envirotex, on 07/04/2008, -0/+15Print it out. I like that idea. All nice an legal like.
- niksad8, on 07/04/2008, -1/+11just zip the records and span them on the 270tons of floppies, so they will spend like 10 yrs extracting then suddenly on floppy no 20044334 Cyclic Redundancy Check ERROR!, oh well then they will have to go back to Google and ask for it again.
  Google : I am sorry we deleted all those records because you had the backup.
- Viriatus2, on 07/04/2008, -1/+13that would be very fun but not environment friendly at all
- CarStan, on 07/04/2008, -6/+1Or they could send 12" dildos instead
  /obscure cyanide&happiness reference
  - pinchies, on 07/04/2008, -0/+3if it's obscure, then at least link to it.
- eclectro, on 07/04/2008, -0/+3The court would look dimly on such tactics and would hurt youtube in the long run. This is a fishing expedition and youtube should provide no frills to the data.
- diggit08, on 07/04/2008, -0/+5It could be considered contempt of court.
  
  Environmentally it would be considered harsh on GooGle's part for such a waste of plastic.
  
  But think of all the press that gooGle would get out of this, this is what the internet is about. Sticking it to the man. Inconsequently google has all grown up now, and I doubt they would do something like this.
  
  I once paid overdue parking fines in pennies. $700 worth.
- RobotCitizen, on 07/04/2008, -0/+1I say send it on unlabelled CD-ROM discs, spanned as a multipart RAR file. Let those Viacom ***** sort through a bazillion discs, having to insert each disc in the proper sequence to extract the data.
- Paulish, on 07/04/2008, -0/+1in .txt files
UltramegaOK, on 07/03/2008, -5/+164***** VIACOM
***** THE RIAA
- carlj133, on 07/03/2008, -3/+64***** EVERYONE
- ThreeDee912, on 07/03/2008, -0/+71Has anyone noticed it's basically:
  Google VS. Everyone Else? (Viacom, Yahoo, FCC, NBC/Universal, Verizon, Microsoft, SEO&email spam, News Corp., etc.)? The list goes on and on and on...
  - Murdats, on 07/04/2008, -1/+21the dogs are always at the throat of the leader.
  - Maxpower57, on 07/04/2008, -0/+12and google is winning.
  - skith86, on 07/04/2008, -1/+7google - 1 // everyone else - 0
  - yeskia, on 07/04/2008, -0/+8***** ROGERS
    ***** AT&T
- sysop073, on 07/04/2008, -0/+19It's impressive that "***** THE RIAA" can get dozens of diggs every time it's posted, they've really managed to make everyone in the world hate them
- mrynit, on 07/04/2008, -0/+13***** THE MPAA
  ***** THE DMCA
- eastlondoner, on 07/04/2008, -8/+3***** THE POLICE!
- KnightHawk2277, on 07/04/2008, -0/+6|||||||||||||||||||---|||---------||||---|||||||||||||||||||---|||------|||
  |||---------------|||---------||||---|||---------------|||----|||--
  |||---------------|||---------||||---|||---------------|||--|||----
  |||||||||||---------|||---------||||---|||---------------||||||------
  |||---------------|||---------||||---|||---------------|||--|||----
  |||---------------|||---------||||---|||---------------|||----|||--
  |||---------------|||||||||||||||||||---|||||||||||||||||||---|||------|||
  
  ||||||---------||||||---|||||||||||||||||||---------|||---------|||||||||||||||||||---|||||||||||||||||||---|||||------------||||||
  --|||---------|||-----------|||--------------|||-|||-------|||---------------|||----------|||---|||-|||---------|||-|||
  ---|||-------|||------------|||-------------|||---|||------|||---------------|||----------|||---|||--|||-------|||--|||
  ----|||-----|||-------------|||------------|||||||||||||-----|||---------------|||----------|||---|||---|||-----|||---|||
  -----|||---|||--------------|||-----------|||-------|||----|||---------------|||----------|||---|||----|||---|||----|||
  ------|||-|||---------------|||----------|||---------|||---|||---------------|||----------|||---|||-----|||-|||-----|||
  -------||||-----------|||||||||||||||||||---|||----------|||---|||||||||||||||||||---|||||||||||||||||||---|||------||||------|||
GorfTron, on 07/04/2008, -1/+34Discovery is always a bitch in the hands of morons.
- infinitus64, on 07/04/2008, -1/+17and is daft punks best album.
- GeckoSlayer, on 07/04/2008, -0/+1I have nothing in law, just wondering, because the judge just said they should 'slap' the data onto 3 'over-the-counter' 4TB hard disks, does this mean it has to be in READABLE form? Could it be encrypted? The judge didn't really specify... Although it'd probably put google in the bad books with a few judges..
  - theaceoffire, on 07/04/2008, -0/+1Why piss the judge off?
    
    Just give it all in txt files with no formating, single line.
    
    ^_^ It would take a decent programmer some time to turn that into useable data for a lawsuit.
drcosquared, on 07/04/2008, -1/+101These aren't the droids you're looking for.
- fearlessfx, on 07/04/2008, -0/+11These aren't the droids we're looking for.
- TheCheeks, on 07/04/2008, -5/+2Been watchin Spike?
  - pinchies, on 07/04/2008, -0/+2Spike's not looking for anyone, buddy.
Clark, on 07/04/2008, -2/+24Of course the copyrighted material is going to be more popular, that's where people went too look up video clips.

Now, of course, that this is pretty much gone, people go to YouTube for originalish content.
I wouldn't have minded if Google handed over how many copyrighted videos were watched, but there really was no reason to give the IP addresses as well.
- locojones, on 07/04/2008, -0/+5Except for the fact that the judge ordered it as part of his discovery ruling.
Skooma714, on 07/04/2008, -2/+125Yeah, Google if you can just give us every trade secret you own and data on all of your users that would be just keen!

Who the ***** do these people think they are? They wanted the source code to Google!? What the hell would make them think they even for a minute had any ground to demand that?

Those execs must have been doing way too much coke.
- nblsavage, on 07/04/2008, -1/+62Lawyers work the same way politicians do. Push for something outrageous that you know will be rejected so the other things you ask for don't sound as bad.
- haidle02, on 07/04/2008, -4/+4nblsavage - my thoughts exactly.
- locojones, on 07/04/2008, -7/+1Read the article. They were asking for the algorithms that YouTube claims it has to filter copyrighted material. The relevancy for purposes of the lawsuit is to see if it actually exists and how efficient it is given the ease of repeat rampant copyright infringement on the site, which goes to the heart of whether the safe harbor provision will protect YouTube. It's entirely appropriate to ask for given the allegations.
- Rocco03, on 07/04/2008, -0/+1Did they send Lumbergh to ask for the data?
Wolfie351, on 07/04/2008, -4/+96What troubles me is that Google actually has the user data to hand over.
- nblsavage, on 07/04/2008, -1/+37Well I can understand having the uploaders data but not viewers.
- grantmoore3d, on 07/04/2008, -5/+4Well, I'm sure part of their search engine works based on previous searches and subsequent views... they have a lot of reasons to want that kind of data.
  - troye, on 07/04/2008, -2/+5not on ***** youtube.
    
    welcome to digg, get educated in the geek arts and maybe you'll last longer
- MikeSavior, on 07/04/2008, -1/+20How do you think favorites and history are stored? Magical fairy dust?
  - Loonacy, on 07/04/2008, -0/+23You mean I installed this Magical Fairy Dust Firefox addon for nothing?
  - sysop073, on 07/04/2008, -6/+1...how does that have anything to do with Google needing to hand the data over? I don't care what magic they use to store it, I care that they need to share it with Viacom
- shadowblade989, on 07/04/2008, -0/+16The only difference between Google and every other website that exists is that Google doesn't delete the data after a given period of time. As stated in another comment "This is Google we're talking about. There is no such thing as delete." [XeroKool]
- mathcreative, on 07/04/2008, -1/+1Why the heck do they need people's ip addresses. That should be kept secret!
  - Chris4, on 07/07/2008, -0/+1IP addresses aren't secret. Every website you connect to can see it. So it's not a secret, like you say.
JesseJ, on 07/04/2008, -1/+23I think we all should send Viacom some data. I will send them some data via email right now. I think If we all send each day a few Mb of random data to Viacom as an email attachment, they will be satisfied!

How about some email adresses?
kookbutt, on 07/04/2008, -21/+5Just deleted my YouTube account and my Google account.
- glucoseboy, on 07/04/2008, -1/+18You did read the article right? They keep that data.
- JesseJ, on 07/04/2008, -4/+4So Viacom won over you, huh... wussy..
- judicar, on 07/04/2008, -2/+3The news media has been alerted sir.
- SimonTB, on 07/04/2008, -6/+2Dumbass *****. The data is STORED. So you won't be producing any more, but it won't change what they already have.
- VitriolAndAngst, on 07/04/2008, -1/+2You are too late and you are punishing a company that had to comply with a court order.
  
  The same company that did not bend over for the Bush administration because they didn't have a court order.
  
  And again, you would be too late to remove an account.
  - hoodmonkey, on 07/04/2008, -1/+3Thanks, kookbutt.
    
    The lawsuit has been dropped.
    
    Sincerely, Viacom.
tm4c, on 07/04/2008, -2/+48If anything Google should have offered the compromise of sending them the hashcode of the IP address and username. I can't wait for the day when Judges are required to have a technical degree in the case they are presiding over.
- locojones, on 07/04/2008, -7/+2What part of a Discovery Order don't you understand? There is no compromise. You do it, or you get sanctioned for contempt and you lose the case.
smurf22, on 07/04/2008, -0/+21You'd think removed videos would be deleted shortly afterwards.
- XeroKool, on 07/04/2008, -0/+31This is Google we're talking about. There is no such thing as delete.
  - Ronars, on 07/04/2008, -2/+4this is high-tech. I'd bet everything on youtube exists in a half-dozen backups - and that's dozens of terrabites of data backed up each time. Think what would happen if, say, there was a fire and it wiped out google's servers? Would the internet stop? No, Google would simply claim the fifty million in insurance, and boot up the next building over, full of all the same data.
  - atgmac, on 07/04/2008, -0/+9Terrabites eh? You've actually managed to get *both* the prefix and the stem wrong.
  - dagnome1984, on 07/04/2008, -0/+8Terrabites is a system of measurement that exclusively addresses dirt consumption.
- rkuchiki, on 07/04/2008, -0/+2I once deleted all of my videos then my YouTube account. A year later I requested restoration of both, and got them. Hell, videos I forgot even existed reappeared in my account.
  
  These videos were deleted before Google bought YouTube. There was never a "Delete" on YouTube.
judicar, on 07/04/2008, -3/+7I hear they're going to zip it up and upload to it to a news group as arj spans.
TubeDigger, on 07/04/2008, -1/+30Viacom broke the Chappelle Show and now they want to read your diary. How do you take down a bully?
- IllBeBack, on 07/04/2008, -0/+21With 300 Spartan soldiers?
- troye, on 07/04/2008, -0/+5vandalize their corporate building and flatten their tires
youMISERABLEpos, on 07/04/2008, -9/+3***** THE RIAA

***** VIACOM

***** ME IF I WATCHED ANYTHInG RISQUE AND IT GETS OUT!!!!1
- SimonTB, on 07/04/2008, -0/+4If?
leejarratt, on 07/04/2008, -7/+1Google is my father.
- eleete, on 07/04/2008, -2/+2I invented google, or was that Gore ?
- Firehed, on 07/04/2008, -2/+9Your father watches you masturbate to crappy porn on youtube?
  
  That's... unusual.
  - trdrstv, on 07/04/2008, -0/+1It's not as uncommon as you might think.
bencho, on 07/04/2008, -4/+2Some poor guy's gotta copy data? Whats so difficult with hitting copy and paste 12 times?
- wonderchemist, on 07/04/2008, -1/+10If you had a 64-bit system you would only need to hit copy and paste once.
- N00F, on 07/04/2008, -0/+9It is the summer time. This is a student job.
  - grantmoore3d, on 07/04/2008, -0/+2*shudders* remembering some of the tasks I've had to do as a summer employee.... you're not too far off
DVmaker, on 07/04/2008, -0/+13I think the 1st few guys are missing the point... This is a bad thing.
VitriolAndAngst, on 07/04/2008, -2/+24Wow, finding some old geezer judge is sure a lot cheaper and easier than buying a company... does Google have to give Viacom their first born too?

I guess, we shouldn't be surprised if Viacom makes a breakthrough in search engine technology after this.
eleete, on 07/04/2008, -1/+15...Just 12TB of youtube data...

If they compress it, it won't be so much ; )
- ZaZ2137, on 07/04/2008, -0/+34Be an interesting WinRAR vs 7zip test
  - mohamedmansour, on 07/04/2008, -0/+57zip will compress 12TB .... Depends if the data is txt or video, if its video, it depends if raw video or compressed video. But 7Zip will beat WinRar's ass anytime. Proven
  - Ravatar, on 07/04/2008, -1/+3WinRar the app extracts way ***** faster though (7z and rar). And it actually unzips TO THE FOLDER, not a ***** temp folder where it then copies it via explorer (LAZY).
  - Rolcol, on 07/04/2008, -0/+7@Ravatar: Programs aren't lazy. Only the coders.
  - Ravatar, on 07/04/2008, -0/+1I'm aware of that. When someone is speaking about software, aren't they almost always also speaking about those who developed it?
- TheWindBlows, on 07/04/2008, -4/+2youtube data = media and youtube servers already do h264 on the video and thats about as compressed as video will get without some newer complex multi file alogrithm.
  - Teej, on 07/04/2008, -1/+7Yeah, but this is about the database data they're handing over.
toastmonster, on 07/04/2008, -1/+18Viacom are a bunch of ass bandits
Vektuz, on 07/04/2008, -2/+116Google needs to hand over the data to comply with the ruling.
They should comply EXTRA compliably. The data should be in the form of plain text english. A sample line from the log should be:
"On The First Day of the Month of February in the year Two thousand and one AD, at exactly One minute and three seconds and four thousand five hundred microseconds past noon, a User at the IP address one-three-seven-two attempted to access the video on our web server four which resides in dallas, texas. The web server received the following bytes of data in the request: Two Hundred and Fifty Four. Seventy Three... "
And so on. Give them all the relevant information and as much irrelevant information as is humanly possible. If they need help sorting it... tough. For bonus credit add redundant timestamps to every line, and make sure the file is multi-character encoded (for internationalization!) so its twice as big as it needs to be. Then send a truck full of CDROMS with it burned on to.
Extra credit for sending the ip addresses in a giant terrabyte text file seperate from the giant terrabyte of address logs seperate from the giant terrabytes of access logs, seperate from the giant terrabytes of requests. Or for seperating each request, user, access data, and other event into its own .txt file with filenames that look like md5 hashes.
- Firehed, on 07/04/2008, -2/+5I'd rather see it printed off in a font extremely difficult to OCR, and dropped out of the back of Larry and Sergey's private jet (bonus points if it lands on top of Viacom's CEO's car).
- GTanaka, on 07/04/2008, -0/+14Fun as it may be, generating that text to make it unique would be a massive waste of time, and if it's digitally created regular expressions would parse it way too easily : /
  - JefffN, on 07/04/2008, -0/+18Good point. They should send screenshots of the logs. In bmp format, of course.
  - saejinn, on 07/04/2008, -0/+4or just print it out as a novel.
  - Paulish, on 07/04/2008, -0/+1There are more than 6 billion people in China. How expensive could it be to get some of them to do it?
- Eganj, on 07/04/2008, -0/+3I really hope Google reads digg.
corruptz0r, on 07/04/2008, -10/+2"NO SOURCE CODE FOR YOU!" --google
- mathcreative, on 07/04/2008, -0/+2soup reference
Rndm_Tngnt, on 07/04/2008, -2/+21Just print it out.
- jordn, on 07/04/2008, -0/+2Yeah, but the amount of paper required to do that would clear a small forest.
Fubarepublic, on 07/04/2008, -1/+45Interesting that Viacom would insist on the Google source code for search, Google's main advantage in search. This code has nothing to do with the case but presents an opportunity to hijack Google's advantage in the search business. Google has paid good money for excellent research and discovery of suitable talent yet, Viacom in an insidious attempt with nefarious intent has attempted to use the law and copyright ***** to usurp Google in a way that would damage it permanently. Its disgusting that Viacom would wish to effectively hijack Google's business and with that profit from code that has no relevance whatsoever in the concept that uploading 10 min clips of content can damage profits. Viacom have no shame and are a company acting as if a child removed of toys.
- thebassmaster, on 07/04/2008, -0/+17dugg for using insidious and nefarious in the same sentence
- ryanere, on 07/04/2008, -6/+1maybe its because they want to know how people are accessing their copyrighted media...
- envirotex, on 07/04/2008, -0/+6They require Google's search logic because after this court case has concluded all of Viacom and it's subsidiary entities will be rightfully and permanently banned from appearing in any Google result data set.
  
  They will need to create their own search engine to survive any much further than a decade from now.
VitriolAndAngst, on 07/04/2008, -0/+26How did Viacom prove that they were hurt financially by people posting their material on Google anyway?
And what does the search engine tech have to do with the videos --- of course, nothing.

The idiot who ruled in this case doesn't understand the tech involved, the damages and what end goes in what of the internet tubes. This is like anally probing an entire school because you claimed that someone there might have raped you.
- locojones, on 07/04/2008, -4/+2If you'd get off the computer and actually go to law school you'd actually understand the Copyright Law, which says you don't have to show damage as a pre-requisite to filing a lawsuit. That's why there are statutory damages allowed.
  
  And the copyright filtering algorithm is entirely relevant and apporpriate to ask for because it goes to the heart of the safe harbor defense.
bxblox, on 07/04/2008, -3/+36"We'll just be needing the source code to google." L O freaking L
digismack, on 07/04/2008, -0/+72They should post a .torrent file of the data on The Pirate Bay for Viacom.
- pinchies, on 07/04/2008, -0/+4I get it. Host it on a Comcast connection...
DDMX, on 07/04/2008, -3/+40From comments of original article posted earlier today.

"The Judge"

Daniel Patrick Moynihan
United States Courthouse
500 Pearl St., Room 2250
New York, NY10007

Phones
(212) 805-0252

Faxes
(212) 805-0389
- tama00, on 07/04/2008, -0/+5What are you gonna do call them up and say what lol
  - Foot56, on 07/04/2008, -0/+22"Who is your daddy and what does he do?"
  - tomd123, on 07/04/2008, -0/+6"I'll rip your head off and ***** down your neck!"
  - TheSnuffster, on 07/04/2008, -0/+10Treat them to a live rendition of Chocolate Rain
  - fearlessfx, on 07/04/2008, -0/+7http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU
- locojones, on 07/04/2008, -12/+9Yeah, why don't you losers all go and do that. Call up and harrass a federal judge, in a building that also houses the US Marshall's. Then come back and let us all know how well it went. Idiots.
angusm, on 07/04/2008, -1/+16As I understand it, Viacom's declared need for this data is supposedly so that they can determine what portion of YouTube's inventory and user activity involved copyright violations. If that's the case, they don't need actual usernames or IPs: Google could just replace all the usernames with johndoe1 ... johndoe1000000 and all the IPs with 1.1.1.1 ... 255.255.255.255, and it would serve Viacom's stated purpose just as well, provided that the replacements are made consistently.
- locojones, on 07/04/2008, -12/+5Assuming you could even go to law school, when you were done you'd realize how stupid of a statement this is. First, they ened usernams and IPs to show a pattern of copyright infringement by the same user despite YouTube's allegations that they take down material and ban users. If the log data shows the contrary, it opens YouTube up to contributory infringement liability.
  
  Second, whenever you're sued, the federal rules of civil procedure preclude you from altering or deleting your electronically discoverable evidence. If you do, there are severe penalties for discovery violations, to the point where you'd automatically lose your case.
  
  So please stop being dumb.
  - meltat373k, on 07/04/2008, -2/+11What he's saying is to replace ip addresses and user names with surrogate keys where you don't lose referential integrity of the data. There won't be any deletion or alteration of the physical data.
  - angusm, on 07/05/2008, -1/+1It's not clever to accuse people of being dumb when your own response demonstrates that you have completely failed to understand what was being suggested. Read meltat373k's comment for an explanation if you're still having difficulty.
- Fubarepublic, on 07/04/2008, -1/+0Who is to say that hashing the names and numbers is wrong, the judge stated he wanted the data, I don't see anywhere that he specifies in what state...
  
  128 bit hash key, hope you have 20 years on super computer,,,,
  
  Of course Viacon will ask it be removed at which point Google could argue copyright privacy on source code, game over!
DiggRage, on 07/04/2008, -0/+9If they removed videos because they were in violation of copyright, why would Google keep a *COPY* of the removed material? Wouldn't that, as well, be a copyright violation?
- tama00, on 07/04/2008, -0/+9they keep records of the viewed youtube videos. not the video data itself.
- DiggRage, on 07/04/2008, -0/+4From The Article: "Finally, Viacom wanted a copy of every video ever put up in a private account, hoping to show that these were a hotbed of piratical activity."
  
  Maybe my reading comprehension is not as good as yours, but this reads (to me at least) that they want a "copy of every video", not a "copy of the records of every video". Can someone explain this better?
  - winampman2, on 07/04/2008, -1/+2there are private and business accounts. business accounts are for companies like tv networks or record companies that use youtube to host their video content (e.g., a record label uploading one of their new music videos). by definition, all of the videos they upload are original.
    
    private accounts are for people like you and me. we can upload whatever the hell we want, even if its not our content. this is what viacom is interested in.
  - Fubarepublic, on 07/04/2008, -0/+0Yes, so they can employ the new buisiness model.
    
    Make viral content.
    Gain a fan base
    ????
    Uploads appear.
    Litigation
    Profit.
    
    Expect to see more "house of cards" boiler plate litigation being thrown into the publics midst without due regard for anything other than supporting a lawyers ego.
Elderon, on 07/04/2008, -0/+6would they like the sinks from google as well?
- eriksanerd, on 07/04/2008, -0/+2Bathroom, yes. Kitchen optional.
EclipseGSX, on 07/04/2008, -2/+16Wait... all I needed to do to get the deleted video of that 18 year old cheerleader stripping was be a multi-billion-dollar company with a ***** of lobbyists? I'm calling shenanigans.
grantmoore3d, on 07/04/2008, -2/+7Wow, so their whole point is that illegal material is more popular than user created videos!? Clearly no one at Viacom uses the internet....
slave1, on 07/04/2008, -1/+28No Source Code for Old Men
MildApplause, on 07/04/2008, -2/+4We are rapidly approaching a point where trying to maintain absolute control over hours and hours and hours and hours of stuff you broadcast over satellites and interwebs and analog transmitters all over the place is getting kind of ridiculous and eventually someone in some position of power will realize that. Hopefully during our lifetime.
footfwd, on 07/04/2008, -2/+1Wholly clash of the titans, Viacom has the congress bent over, seems google doesn't pick up the soap for anyone with out a real fight.
- Fubarepublic, on 07/04/2008, -0/+0Tigers are cute and fluffy until they are looking at you like they want something...
MnMs, on 07/04/2008, -1/+5If they want to see if copyrighted media is more popular than user created media why do they need IPs? All you really need is a list of all videos and the amount of views for each to determine that
- SamuelHenderson, on 07/04/2008, -3/+1I guess they probably want the IP addresses to confirm unique views.
  
  I wonder how long that report will take to build?
- Fubarepublic, on 07/04/2008, -0/+020 minutes on MySQL
shadowblade989, on 07/04/2008, -0/+38The 12TB of data should be transferred via P2P on a bandwidth-throttled connection.
- archivist, on 07/04/2008, -0/+3that would be... 200... bps
- Fubarepublic, on 07/04/2008, -0/+1Send it through AOL....
  
  (Quite a challenge I would think)
IllBeBack, on 07/04/2008, -0/+11Google should just send Viacom ONE THIN MINT!
- AL7AIR, on 07/04/2008, -0/+6When did Mr. Creosote become the CEO of Viacom?
- Fubarepublic, on 07/04/2008, -0/+0but its wafer thin!
GCarden, on 07/04/2008, -0/+49And while they're at it, Viacom would like a pony.
- admdrew, on 07/04/2008, -0/+1Google's Flying Magical Pony is no longer safe :(
my10cent, on 07/04/2008, -6/+0I am really concerned for Viacom and the obviouslt non talented programmers they hire, YouTube and Google are no big deal, it should be fairly easy to make better versions, as a matter of fact better versions are already out there, such as livevideo.com whoes live stream beats Youtube in many ways.
tomd123, on 07/04/2008, -2/+0One MRI for, it says its for Google..
ren1999, on 07/04/2008, -1/+12Sounds like Viacom is trying to steal Google's trade secrets. Maybe Viacom wants to start its own YouTube. At any rate, the courts failed to protect people's privacy and Google's intellectual property.
- Viakenny, on 07/04/2008, -0/+1and it would be US-only. however, MTV's non-music content and Stewart/Colbert are available nearly everywhere in the world (except in countries like Canada).
  - Rapter09, on 07/04/2008, -0/+1Yeah, go ahead, rub it in :(.
- Atomic1fire, on 07/04/2008, -0/+1And the fact that viacom has connections to cbs
  If they are trying to start a search engine
  Viacom>national amusements>cbs>cnet>search.com
copypastry, on 07/04/2008, -2/+14Viacom demanded all the removed videos cause they want to sort through it and get all the dancing jailbait vids.
Niteryder, on 07/04/2008, -1/+11Boycott Viacom! end of issue...
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No Google source code for Viacom, just 12TB of YouTube data

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