Matthew Steven's Thought Box

Commentary on ham radio, computer programming, education, authority, poetry, and dogs

Google Breaks The Cardinal Rule of Controversial Website Mangement

07/03/08 | by admin

| Categories: Nerd Thoughts

This week Google was forced to hand over their logs of all visitors who have ever watched a video on Youtube. Big Media are hunting for even more ways to sue their customers it appears.

Hey webmasters: Never log your visitors if you want to keep running a successful controversial website. Then there’s nothing to submit when the subpoena comes.

Why did they do it then? Simple, greed got them. The user traffic patterns of all those IP addresses on You-Tube are worth a lot of money, and the logs make that total information awareness possible.

Google may have their cake, but Viacom et al are going to eat it too.

May the lawyers enjoy their yachting as they always do. In the end we’ll have one less fair use right.

Have you contributed to protecting your freedom lately?

1 comment •

Comments, Pingbacks:

Comment from: Adam [Visitor] · http://www.adamrlee.org

Hi Matt. I was wondering if all websites must comply with requests to hand over information like that? The problem with not logging is that spamsters can have a free ride and not be blocked. What do you think? Oh yes check out my forum and post there sometime :D

Permalink 07/08/08 @ 09:35

Matthew Steven's Thought Box

Matthew Steven is a lifelong technology enthusiast. He has been in the business of creating ecommerce web applications, solving problems on UNIX platforms, and hosting servers since the earliest days of the internet. He is active in community service, plays classical guitar, and has a number of furry children.