Chaos as YouTube ordered to turn over all user viewing histories

Viacom's war against YouTube over the illegal reposting of video content it owns has finally won it a huge victory in the court of law. Last night a judge ruled that YouTube (and owner Google) is required to turn over a mountain of information to Viacom, including every user's IP address and user name and a list of every video that user has ever watched on the service. (Yes, that's a lot of data.) Google is also required to give Viacom a copy of every video it has ever taken down from the YouTube service, regardless of the reason.

The usual user advocates are naturally calling this a catastrophic failure of the courts to recognize users' right to privacy, but the courts have relied on Google's own defense of its data retention tactics (which holds that an IP address alone won't reveal personal information about a user) as a justification for the verdict. That's one thing, but by demanding user names along with IP addresses, that argument goes out the window. Many are already speculating that Viacom will sue the users who watched the videos as a next step. Heck, it's so popular with the RIAA, why not try it here?

Will Google comply with the order? Good question. It's already being speculated that if it does users will file a massive class action suit against Google in retaliation, and they'd be right to do so. Certainly the release of AOL user search history debacle isn't so far behind us that we've forgotten those lessons already (though in fairness, AOL's data release was its own doing, not a legal judgment).

This issue will likely not stop here as the combatants continue to fight it out in court, but in the meantime, the sobering reality is that it's time to rethink what you're watching on YouTube (or any other video sharing service, for that matter), as it's all too likely that's about to become a matter of public record.