Looks like Viacom is getting ready to attack YouTube once again for copyrighted material on the site, or is this just another battle in their drawn out war?
Now, it seems that YouTube viewers (you and me both) may be part of the collateral damage. With a judges ruling to turn over data records, people's viewing habits could be compromised, which it turns out is actually against the law.
The records are only tied to an IP address (and not more detailed user data), which the judge found sufficiently protected users. Clearly he didn't read any coverage of AOL releasing "anonymous" search data a while back.
This time around, it looks like YouTube, Viacom, and a little assistance from the EFF, are looking to insure viewing data can't be reverse engineered to discover a user. With over 12 terabytes of log data, I'm pretty sure one or two clever people could find a few needles in that haystack.
For more on the story, check out the original article here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/03/AR2008070302359_2.html?wpisrc=newsletter&sid=ST2008070304015&pos=
