About Viacom and Google

I think you heard about the litigation between Google and Viacom, which obliged Google to provide Viacom with all the ip addresses and logins from which the videos were viewed (or even not all data at all).

They like to speculate on paranoids about how bad google is, it watches us, etc., and the real danger comes from governments and media holdings. Imagine a future where you cannot give a book to a friend, and libraries (paper / electronic) will be absent as a class. And any creative impulse in music or literature will go to commerce. And progress will be endlessly slowed down by monopolies and patents, and we will all break off just like we break off now because of the oil barons.