Privacy

Many, perhaps all, of us assume that our privacy is respected and protected in most aspects of our lives. This notion is so ingrained in our society that I never gave it a second thought until this week when a court ruled that Google must turn over data on YouTube users to Viacom. Within hours, a friend on a mailing list wrote,

This boils down to the public being ruled against (victimized) in a court case where we – the people – have no representation.

Our constitution does not guarantee our privacy, though it’s amendments support several specific aspects of privacy which were reflected in the Bill of Rights. The University of Missouri at Kansas City Law School has a good article exploring The Right of Privacy. I particularly like this quotation from the bottom of that page from Justice Brandeis’s dissent in Olmstead v. U. S. (1928),

The makers of our Constitution understood the need to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness, and the protections guaranteed by this are much broader in scope, and include the right to life and an inviolate personality — the right to be left alone — the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. The principle underlying the Fourth and Fifth Amendments is protection against invasions of the sanctities of a man’s home and privacies of life. This is a recognition of the significance of man’s spiritual nature, his feelings, and his intellect.

The notion that our video viewing habits are “private” is very recent and short lived. Broadcast television is only about 50 years old and the very nature of the broadcast medium assures a high degree of privacy to the viewers. TiVo, now 11 years old, brought the issue into the limelight when people realized that TiVo (the company) collects information on the viewing habits of its customers. Pay-per-view cable television, which began way back in the 1980s, somehow escaped much of the brouhaha though the PPV vendors obviously know exactly who is purchasing and, presumably, watching every single video.

Additionally, the notion that we can borrow a video or book and enjoy it in privacy is only a few generations old. In the past, people would view “borrowed” materials from libraries. At least here in America, over the last several generations, libraries have developed a culture of protecting patrons’ privacy. In many instances, this culture is so in-grained that the libraries meticulously destroy patron borrowing records to assure that the data cannot be accessed and misused. As we move to “borrowing” material more often from for-profit entities, we move away from the librarians for whom patrons (us) are a primary focus.

Google, for instance, has fiduciary responsibility only to three sets of entities: employees, stockholders, and (paying) customers. Except as it impacts those entities, Google has no real interest in protecting the privacy of YouTube viewers.

Does this matter? Clearly, it does. Does it matter enough for people to change their video viewing habits. I doubt it. I think the vast majority of people will grumble, sigh, and go on with their lives and won’t really miss this bit of privacy-lost.

The key take-away from this court case is to remember that, as a YouTube viewer, you are 100% empowered to protect your own privacy. You are not a victim. You get to choose what you watch, where you watch it, and whether (and how) you hide your identity when you watch it.

To be specific, assuming that you want to watch that Viacom-produced and copyright protected clip from The Colbert Report

1. You can watch the live broadcast, or use your personal video recorder to time shift the broadcast, or watch the clip from Viacom’s ComedyCentral.com web site, or watch the clip on YouTube.
2. Assuming that you want to watch the clip on YouTube, you can watch it on your own computer in youor own home using your own internet connection, or you can use a public computer, or you can use your own computer connected to a public Wi-Fi network or your neighbor’s Wi-Fi network.
3. Further assuming that you want to watch using your own computer on your own internet connection, you could choose to hide your identity by using any of a wide variety of services which make you more or less anonymous on the world-wide web.