A US District Court in Northern California has instructed Google to
produce identifying information for a YouTube member accused of
illegally uploading episodes of Fox’s “24” and “The Simpsons.”
The court issued an identical subpoena, pursuant to the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act, to Los Angeles-based LiveDigital.com. Both
were executed on Wednesday after L.A. law firm Loeb & Loeb filed them
for Fox on January 18.
A YouTube spokesperson told internetnews.com the Google property will comply with “valid U.S. legal process.” A LiveDigital spokesperson confirmed receipt of the subpoena and said the company intends to fully comply.
According to copies of the subpoena applications, Fox found this
season’s first four episodes of “24” on LiveDigital and YouTube on
January 8, a full week before they were due to air for the first time
in the U.S.
Fox said a YouTube user who goes by the handle “ECOTtotal” also
uploaded twelve episodes of the popular animated show “The Simpsons.”
The LiveDigital user’s display name was “Jorge Romero.” In a rider
attached to the subpoena, the user is described as a six-foot tall 23
year-old from Chicago.
The last time Google faced subpoenas requesting access to
user-identifying data it came from the Department of Justice. It was
January 2006.
The DoJ subpoena sought an index of millions of URLs and a week’s
worth of search data in order to get a representative sampling of
pornographic and other obscene material accessed via search engines.
A similar request was made to America Online, Yahoo and Microsoft;
each complied.
But Google challenged the government’s request in court. In March
2006, Google was compelled to turn over a log of 50,000 URLs but not
any of the search query data the government had sought.
