Privacy and Youtube

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Origamist

Legendary Member
Interesting discussion, (following on from Sharky's bus experience). It appears that if you complain to Youtube about cyclecam footage demonstrating your poor driving, Youtube will summarily remove it, as is their want as it is deemed a privacy breach. It's not clear though if this is due to the registration details of the car being divulged in the footage (and meta-data) and/or because it shows the individual's face.


Dear JameyCam, This is to notify you that we have received a privacy complaint from an individual regarding your content:

-------------------------------------------------------------
Video URLs:


View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8RZYpjCyys

The information reported as violating privacy is at 0:08
-------------------------------------------------------------

We would like to give you an opportunity to remove or edit your video so
that it no longer potentially violates the privacy of the individuals
involved. You can edit your video by removing names and other personal
information from the video's title, metadata or tags. Annotations or
marking the video as private are not acceptable forms of editing and your
video will still be at risk of removal. Please edit or remove the material
reported by the individual within 48 hours of today's date. If no action
is taken, the video will then come in for review by the YouTube staff and
be prohibited from being uploaded again.

If the potential privacy violation is contained within the metadata or
title of the video, you should be able to edit this content without video
removal. If the potential privacy violation is within the video content,
the video may have to be removed completely.

Protecting a person's privacy is protecting their personal safety. When
uploading videos in the future, please remember not to post someone else's image or personal information without their consent. Personal information includes things such as names, phone numbers and email addresses. For more information, please review our Community Guidelines at http://www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines?hl=en_GB and our Safety Centre at http://www.youtube.com/t/safety?hl=en_GBRegards,

The YouTube Team


Jamey's reply to Youtube:

Hello,

Thanks for letting me know but it is my belief that my video
(


View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8RZYpjCyys
) does not violate anyone's privacy.

Please note the following points:

- This video was filmed entirely by me using the helmet-mounted camera I
wear at all times while cycling to and from work.

- This video was filmed entirely on public roads.

- The information that I presume is in question is the car's number plate
which was clearly visible in the video.

- The reason cars have number plates is so that the driver can be traced when they do something stupid. In this instance I reported the driver to the police and gave them the URL to this video along with my report. But it is only the police that can trace him. Nobody else viewing this video will be able to track him down, not that they'd want to.

- I presume the driver has received a letter from the police (they told me they were sending him one) about his behaviour and has reported this video for a privacy breach. However none of his personal details are on display. A car number plate is a public-facing record of a car's registration and this video was filmed in public.

Please get back to me to let me know your decision. Thank you.

J


http://www.bikeradar.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12609612&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=600
 

NigC

New Member
Location
Surrey
I would guess it's the registration that's the problem.

AFAIK, anyone can go to the DVLA and request name and address details of the owner of a vehicle registration. They will happily provide it for a £10 fee.

It's been a while since I heard this though, so this may not be right anymore.
 

benb

Evidence based cyclist
Location
Epsom
You don't have any right to privacy in a place where you would have no expectation of privacy - that's why you can legally take photos of whoever you want in a public place, provided it isn't hassling them.

Public road = no invasion of privacy.

However, YouTubes on position on privacy may differ from the above.
 

gaz

Cycle Camera TV
Location
South Croydon
Jamie re-uploaded the video and blurred out the plate and didn't display any of it's details in the meta data, description or title. No grounds to complain after that.
I as of yet haven't had anything like that happen. But I have been contacted directly by a company and I removed the footage I had as I felt his driver had learnt from his mistake.
 
OP
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Origamist

Origamist

Legendary Member
gaz said:
Jamie re-uploaded the video and blurred out the plate and didn't display any of it's details in the meta data, description or title. No grounds to complain after that.
I as of yet haven't had anything like that happen. But I have been contacted directly by a company and I removed the footage I had as I felt his driver had learnt from his mistake.

Yep, here's the edited vid:


View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrAoEdXjPQY


Let's see if it gets pulled too.

Clearly though, it makes naming and shaming far less easy if the driver flags it as inappropriate.
 
One of the poster's has got a point though, any individual could flag up a video they don't like (it doesn't have to be the driver) :-(
 
I've been threatened recently with the removal of one of my videos. I replied back saying I had correspondence with the information commissioner suggesting that my posting of the videos was legal. The video wasn't removed.
 

Bollo

Failed Tech Bro
Location
Winch
Legality is one thing, and Youtube's T&Cs are something else entirely. Their motivation will be avoiding hassle at least cost and risk to themselves. If they block a video, at worst the affected user is going to stop using Youtube. Youtube business model says meh. Keep the video up, and they've got to devote human time and effort (the things that will really cost) into dealing with the complaints back and forth.
 
Bollo said:
Legality is one thing, and Youtube's T&Cs are something else entirely. Their motivation will be avoiding hassle at least cost and risk to themselves. If they block a video, at worst the affected user is going to stop using Youtube. Youtube business model says meh. Keep the video up, and they've got to devote human time and effort (the things that will really cost) into dealing with the complaints back and forth.


True, but on this occasion they kept the video up, so mentioning the IC and the recreation exemption to the data protection act did the trick.:blush:
 

Bollo

Failed Tech Bro
Location
Winch
I wasn't trying to be all cynical and clever (well an ickle bit :blush:) but I suspect Youtube will always aim for the path of least resistance when dealing with complaints.

I get more wound up by the lack of consistency - it seems alright to be called a front-bottom and threatened with an oily death in the comments, but simply exposing someone as a road-going bell-end gets Youtube all fussy.
 
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OP
Origamist

Origamist

Legendary Member
magnatom said:
True, but on this occasion they kept the video up, so mentioning the IC and the recreation exemption to the data protection act did the trick.:blush:

That's good to know - it might be worth letting fellow cammers know that this is a way of combating "inapproapriate flags" re: alleged privacy violations as I'd be interested to see if it works for others too.
 

BentMikey

Rider of Seolferwulf
Location
South London
There's an additional way - just host the video yourself. A bit of creativity will get it just as far up the google rankings. There's also Vimeo and the other video sharing sites.
 
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