Michael Zimmer.org

The NY Times reports that when you subscribe to a channel on YouTube, the Google-owned video sharing site  publicly broadcasts this fact by putting your user information on that channel’s page for anyone to see:
Google’s video site lets you subscribe to a “channel” — a collection of videos from one person or company — so you can get reminders about new clips from sources that interest you. When you do this, your user name and photo are usually listed on the page of the channel you are subscribing to. And …

Video privacy be damned.
Louis L. Stanton, a senior judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, issued an order (PDF) Wednesday requiring Google to turn over every record of every video watched by YouTube users, including users’ login and IP addresses, to Viacom, which is suing Google for allowing clips of its copyright videos to appear on YouTube.
The EFF has an excellent summary and reaction, noting that the order likely violates the protections of the federal Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA):
The court’s order grants …

[This thought piece appears on the On The Identity Trail project's blog, blog*on*nymity. Thanks to the amazing folks there for the (second) invitation to contribute to the project. -mz]
This post is an attempt to collect and organize some thoughts on how the rise of so-called Web 2.0 technologies bear on privacy and surveillance studies. After presenting a few examples of unintended consequences of Web 2.0 that bear on privacy and surveillance, I will introduce the term “netaveillance,” which might provide a useful concept around which a more robust theory of …

A video honoring the 5th Anniversary of the Media Ecology Association has been posted to YouTube, featuring choice clips of (roughly in order of appearance) Camile Paglila, Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman (including his famous stint on Comedy Central’s “Daily Show”), Chris Nystrom, and Terry Moran.
I recommend it for anyone who has always wondered “what is Media Ecology?”

ASPnews.com reports that Google has complied with subpoenas issued by the U.S. District Court in Northern California and provided 20th Century Fox the identities of two individuals who illegally uploaded entire episodes of “24″ to YouTube prior to its broadcast and DVD release.
This seems within Google’s rights, as YouTube’s ToS clearly prohibits uploading copyright-protected content, and its privacy policy affirms they will comply with subpoenas.
Loren Baker at Search Engine Journal wonders, however, if Google’s marketing relationship with Fox Interactive (providing ads for MySpace) influenced their willingness …

Michael Kinsley has an amusing piece in Slate remarking on the fact that since so many people freely provide so much personal information on Web 2.0 and social networking sites, that now, On the Internet, everybody knows you’re a dog:
But anonymity does not actually seem to interest many of the Web’s most devoted users. They are the ones who start their own sites, or sign up for MySpace, or submit videos to YouTube. Quite the opposite: The most successful Web sites seem to be those where people can abandon anonymity …

The theory of “privacy as contextual integrity” provides the tools for considering how the introduction of new technologies/practices within a particular context might disrupt norms of information flow, potentially threatening values of privacy, autonomy, or liberty. It is especially useful when considering subtle shifts in information flows that flirt with the boundaries between public & private spheres, such as driving along the highway, having your photo taken in public, or providing information on social network sites such as Facebook.
Another important sphere to consider within the framework of contextual integrity is …

In what really shouldn’t be that big a surprise, it has been reported that YouTube provided personal information about a user to a Hollywood film studio:
On May 24, lawyers for Viacom Inc.’s Paramount Pictures convinced a federal judge in San Francisco to issue a subpoena requiring YouTube to turn over details about a user who uploaded dialog from the movie studio’s “Twin Towers,” according to a copy of the document.
YouTube promptly handed over the data to Paramount, which on June 16 sued the creator of the 12-minute clip, New York …

In one corner, we have the Googlization of virtually every aspect of our online (and increasingly offline) activities, tracking your every move.
In the other corner, we have the increased corporatization of Web 2.0, also interested in watching everything you do in those oh-so-cool social networking spaces.
The twain hath met.
Jeffrey Chester at The Nation points out how Google’s purchase of YouTube represents the creation of the latest cog of “a powerful interactive system that is being designed to serve the interests of some of the wealthiest corporations on the planet”:
Advertisers are …

About the only news that could rival North Korea’s announcement of a nuclear test is the fact that Google announced its intention to buy YouTube.
Not surprisingly, my first reaction is concern over the incredible data-mining opportunity this represents for Google. Millions of YouTube users have created accounts, uploaded videos, performed searched, left comments, created lists of favorites, and so on, leaving behind a clickstream of potentially personally identifiable information. Will Google now add this data to their growing infrastructure of dataveillance? When asked about plans for datamining during a conference …

It was recently revealed (confirmed?) that the popular online video diaries of LonelyGirl15 were not authentic, but a publicity stunt of entertainment folks linked to Hollywood talent agency CAA. Today, the real identity of LonelyGirl15 has also been revealed, mostly through some simple amateur data-mining posted at LG15.com:
I was surfing the article on Lonelygirl15 on TMZ.com when I came across a comment that linked to a private MySpace page that was allegedly that of the actress who plays Lonelygirl15. As the profile was set to “private,” there was …

Recalling past issues surrounding MySpace’s terms of service claiming ownership of user’s uploaded content, it appears YouTube has updated their TOS with similar language. See the discussion at BoingBoing.