Twitter is down (so what’s new?), so I guess that means that I’m going to have to blog my outrage to the news that a judge ordered YouTube to give its user data to Viacom. All this in the midst of the $1 billion lawsuit that forced Stephen Colbert off of the ‘Tube, made Google wish it had never thought of acquiring the video sharing service, sparked one of the major reasons for the recent writer’s strike, and now led into yet the latest infringement of internet privacy.

First off, what is Viacom’s problem? Why can’t they just do what the other major networks have done and partner up with YouTube! For Pete’s sake, I can already watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report IN FULL on their own website with almost no ads, why are they making such a big deal over YouTube?

But what really makes no sense is why Viacom even needs to see the complete records of every single video ever watched on YouTube, complete with username, IP address, and time watched (which must be millions of pages long, I would imagine), along with copies of every video ever removed from YouTube. That’s not copyright infringement, that’s privacy infringement. It shouldn’t be any of Viacom’s business how many times I watch three guys sing about their missing legwarmers or a tomato and a cucumber sing about the difference between a monkey and an ape.

But while those examples may be somewhat humorous and intentionally revealing, internet privacy is quite serious and has affected lives. The article I linked to gave an example of someone who was sent to a concentration camp because Yahoo! was forced to give up information to the Chinese government.

The judge at this case dismissed Google’s concerns over privacy as “speculative.” Well, I may not be a lawyer, and I’m certainly not one to gamble, I’d be more than willing to speculate that this is going to set a very, very bad precedent for the privacy of the internet as we’ve come to know it. I do hope that someone rules this to be illegal, and if not, then there had better be some sort of internet outcry, because this is just wrong and immoral.

Tags: court, Google, judge, privacy, ruling, Viacom, videos, YouTube

Courtesy of the genius invention of timezones, Santa has already begun his 25-hour journey around the globe, and Norad Tracks Santa has always been the best place to track Santa as he goes on his travels. However, this year, they have a Santa Tracker add-on for Google Earth, which lets you track Santa’s sleigh as he moves city to city. It’s a really cool use for Google Earth and will probably keep me mesmerized on there for hours.

Tags: Christmas, Google, Google Earth, holiday, NORAD, Santa, track

Happy Halloween! Although these Webmacster87.info Best Ofs are traditionally for the first of the following month, October’s comes early to avoid conflicting with the Leopard Feature Presentation, which begins tomorrow. October was a slower month of Webmacster87.info until Apple announced details on the Leopard release–only five posts were made here on Webmacster87.info during the first half of the month. However, the Leopard announcement brought along the beginning of my extensive Leopard coverage, including a week-long Tiger-to-Leopard blogging series. In my personal life, October was a very long, drawn-out month that was primarily about trying to catch up on a long to-do list which I still haven’t conquered yet. And so, without further ado, I begin my spooky look back on the last month here on Webmacster87.info…
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Tags: article, Best Of, Google, Webmacster87.info

Now reporting live from Long Beach, California, where it’s smokey (due to the fires), and I’m up on the 6th floor of a particular hotel with my $10 internet charge paid for, I continue my Tiger-to-Leopard blog series. Yesterday, I started out covering some of the Web 2.0 news, in particular focusing on the various Web 2.0 sites that have emerged on the internet. But what about some of the other phenomena that have emerged since Tiger’s release? The series continues…
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Tags: article, browsers, Firefox, Google, Mac OS X Leopard, podcasting, PodPress, TalkShoe, Tiger-to-Leopard, Web 2.0

Hallelujah my prayers and feedback comments from the last eighteen months have FINALLY been answered! Google has just launched IMAP access for Gmail, bringing the revolutionary service into the 21st century, finally, and I’m just so excited that at last I’ll be able to enjoy fully synced up access between the Gmail web interface and my Mail client. I am happy happy happy!

Only one problem now. I’ve still got 113 message in my Mail.app account, and if I end up replacing the POP sign in with the IMAP sign in, what will happen to all my old e-mails? Hmm, I’ll have to figure this one out after I get back from Long Beach…

UPDATE 10/28: I’m going to have to take all of that back. Gmail’s IMAP integration is rather clunky and ended up causing more problems than it solved. I’m back to using Gmail POP, which I’ve kind of gotten used to.

Tags: announcements, excitement, Gmail, Google, IMAP, Mail, News, prayers