英伦广角 Issue 114 谷歌被判需向制作公司提供用户

YouTube's multibillion-pound success was built initially¹ on user-generated content; so successful has it become that the company's owner Google recently announced plans to pay contributors shares of advertising² revenue. But as anyone who uses the site knows, and who doesn't, there are also vast amounts of professionally-made material, so why, says one film and TV giant, shouldn't it be paid as well?

Hello, and welcome to This Week In God.

Viacom's cases are far from being user-generated. Much of YouTube's most popular content is actually made at great expense on a commercial basis by film and television companies. And that for such material simply to be regurgitated free of charge on what essentially³ is a rival channel amounts to copyright theft.

A New York court has granted Viacom access to Google's records of Internet Protocol⁴ addresses—every individual signature of every individual computer which has been used to watch clips on the site. Viacom has given what it calls an unequivocal promise not to use the information to uncover users' identities; it says it simply wants to find out how much of YouTube's business is predicated on people watching copyrighted material. So is there a real risk to privacy?

It's actually much harder than it might seem to, to truly anonymize this quantity of data. It's not just a matter of taking off the usernames or even replacing the IP addresses with random-looking numbers. If you've got records of individuals viewing tens or hundreds or, in some cases, thousands of different YouTube videos, it actually can be quite easy to link those together and then to link them back to a given individual.

Google says it's disappointed that the court granted, what it calls, Viacom's overreaching demand for viewing history, and is pressing to be allowed to anonymize the information before it hands it over. But the search engine company has come into criticism itself from electronic privacy campaigners for keeping user data for commercial purposes. This high-stakes bet between old and new media giants has thrown a light on wider-reaching issues of privacy and anonymity⁵ on the Internet.

1 initially   

adv.最初，开始

参考例句：

• The ban was initially opposed by the US.这一禁令首先遭到美国的反对。
• Feathers initially developed from insect scales.羽毛最初由昆虫的翅瓣演化而来。

2 advertising   

n.广告业；广告活动 a.广告的；广告业务的

参考例句：

• Can you give me any advice on getting into advertising? 你能指点我如何涉足广告业吗?
• The advertising campaign is aimed primarily at young people. 这个广告宣传运动主要是针对年轻人的。

3 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

4 protocol   

n.议定书，草约，会谈记录，外交礼节

参考例句：

• We must observe the correct protocol.我们必须遵守应有的礼仪。
• The statesmen signed a protocol.那些政治家签了议定书。

5 anonymity   

n.the condition of being anonymous

参考例句：

• Names of people in the book were changed to preserve anonymity. 为了姓名保密，书中的人用的都是化名。
• Our company promises to preserve the anonymity of all its clients. 我们公司承诺不公开客户的姓名。