Q: What does Fox hope to accomplish by subpoenaing YouTube?

He thought his problem was the Chinese

A: On the surface, the subpoena Twentieth Century Fox recently sent YouTube's way is just a means of acquiring information about ECOTotal, the user responsible for uploading four episodes of 24 and 12 episodes of The Simpsons to the Google-owned video site. The subpoena was filed Jan. 18th, but didn't receive media coverage until it was tipped to Steve Bryant's GoogleWatch blog Wednesday.

The part about the Simpsons episodes is almost certainly incidental; people upload illegal content to video sites (including Fox's own MySpace) all the time. What really pissed off Fox was that the episodes of 24 -- comprising the four-part season six premier -- appeared on YouTube more than a week before their Jan. 14th and 15th air date. Fox also served a subpoena to the lesser-known video site LiveDigital, targeting a user with the handle "Jorge Romero" who also uploaded the premier.

The premier was a big deal for Fox; 24 is its hottest show, and season five ended on a much-discussed cliffhanger. The new episodes were so hotly anticipated that, in addition to blocking out four hours of prime time over two days for their airing, the company poised itself for an extra cash-in by releasing them to DVD on the 16th.

ECOTotal has been suspended by YouTube, but with a little help from the Google cache, we can uncover a tiny bit of information about him. For one thing, he was popular, rating as the third-most subscribed-to uploader as of Jan. 9th (maybe thanks to the 24 leak). I also strongly suspect that he's German, given that his uploads of an episode of CBS's King of Queens were targeted to sprechers of Deutsch.

The most damning evidence: ECOTotal watches King of Queens.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess LiveDigital's "Jorge Romero" is probably Chicagoan Jorge Romero, whose blog includes tips for light hacking of video sites. Romero's profile lists him as 23, and a tiny bit of detective work identifies him as popular Digg user kal-el (current rank: 430 -- not too shabby). That will probably come in handy if he ever needs a legal-defense fund.

Once Fox receives the two users' IP addresses and email accounts from the subpoenaed sites, the next step is presumably a lawsuit. Which leads to the more important Q: What would be the point of suing these dudes?

The answer may surprise Fox, if they think this brings them any closer to revealing who leaked the premier in the first place, or to preventing future digital piracy.

The real source of the problem for Fox is the leak itself, which points directly back to sources within the company. The only reason ECOTotal and Romero had access to the premier is that the four episodes were posted to BitTorrent sites three weeks ago, by the well-known pirate collective AsiaTeam. And it's not the first time such a thing occurred; the premiers of the current Simpsons' season¹ and the previous season of 24 were also available on BitTorrent trackers prior to their air date.

Pirates: Arrrrr Jack's real problem.

Suing a couple of people at the bottom of the piracy food chain -- both of whom are probably young and broke, and one of whom might have to be extradited from Germany -- would serve little purpose for Fox. It's like targeting the Mob by arresting its drivers.

And considering that there are thousands or millions of citizens worldwide with access to the dozens or hundreds of Torrent trackers where these episodes are originally posted, it'd do very little to prevent anyone else from doing the same thing in the future. It only takes one person to post a video to YouTube or anywhere else.

At best, these subpoenas are nothing more than a litigious temper tantrum. Maybe it makes them feel bigger to scare a couple of college kids, or to force Google's hand on anything. In the real world, it accomplishes zilch.

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¹ When the Simpsons' Halloween premier leaked in late October, I wondered if it wasn't an act of aggression against Fox perpetrated by the show's staff. The network's contract to air the World Series means that the annual "Treehouse of Terror" special usually doesn't air until November, which can't sit too well with the people who make it.

But that's just baseless speculation on my part; the leaked episode was watermarked as a preview for critics, so it could have come from any number of sources.