Viacom Lawyers Showing Bit of Ingenuity in YouTube Case

Posted by Eriq Gardner

Wow, handing over records of every video watched by YouTube users is sure expensive. According to analysis by e-discovery firm Metalincs, the cost of culling and then delivering 12 terabytes is likely to run YouTube as high as $12 million. Still, paying $12 million to save $1 billion (the amount Viacom wants in its lawsuit) is still good math.

However, Viacom is offering a compromise, according to CNet. Facing consumer concerns about privacy, the media giant is telling YouTube that it really only wants the private viewing data of YouTube employees, including co-founder Chad Hurley.

A bit of gamesmanship and it looks like Viacom is winning. According to CNet, "Google and Viacom were close to reaching a deal last week about masking user data when Google backed out."

UPDATE: YouTube and Viacom reached a deal where the user-generated video site will be allowed to mask the identities of individual users when it provides viewership records to Viacom