Lawyers in YouTube lawsuit reach user privacy deal

SAN FRANCISCO, July 14 (Reuters) - Defendants and plaintiffs in two related copyright infringement lawsuits against YouTube have reached a deal to protect the privacy of millions of YouTube watchers during evidence discovery, a spokesman for Google Inc (GOOG.O) said on Monday.

Earlier in July, a New York federal judge ordered Google to turn over YouTube user data to Viacom Inc (VIAb.N) and other plaintiffs to help them to prepare a confidential study of what they argue are vast piracy violations on the video-sharing site.

Google said it had agreed to provide plaintiffs attorneys for Viacom and a class action group led by the Football Association of England a version of a massive viewership database that blanks out YouTube username and Internet address data that could be used to identify individual video watchers.

"We have reached agreement with Viacom and the class action group," Google spokesman Ricardo Reyes said. "They have agreed to let us anonymize YouTube user data," he said.

Privacy activists from the Electronic Frontier Foundation argued in a blog post earlier this month that the order "threatens to expose deeply private information" and violated the Video Privacy Protection Act, a law passed after Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's video rental habits were revealed. (Reporting by Eric Auchard; Editing by Ben Tan)