Judge Rules YouTube Give All User History To Viacom

Ok, what?! According to Wired's Threat Level, Google will have to turn over every record of every video watched by YouTube users, including users' names and IP addresses, to Viacom. You read correctly. Every instance of someone pressing the play button on a YouTube clip on any website, ever. Date, time, IP address.

Background: Viacom is suing Google for allowing clips of its copyright videos to appear on YouTube. Viacom wants the data to prove that infringing material is more popular than user-created videos, which could be used to increase Google's liability if it is found guilty of contributory infringement.

Now Viacom could have sued YouTube at any time within it's first two years of existence, but in a display of typical corporate greed, waited until a company with deep pockets purchased the startup to do so. This proves Viacom is really more interested in a settlement, monetary award, or forcing some kind of partnership deal than actually keeping it's video content off YouTube (which, according to Viacom and other studios OWN ARGUMENTS during the writers strike, does nothing but promote the content.)

If any user can be personally identified by their user history or IP address, this may constitute a violation of the Video Privacy Protection Act, which has already been pointed out by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The VPPA is a law with dated language that was meant "to preserve personal privacy with respect to the rental, purchase, or delivery of video tapes or similar audio visual materials and the use of library materials or services." In 1987, the video rental history of a judge got published in a local alternative newspaper. Congress quickly passed the VPPA the following year, which remains one of the strongest privacy laws on the books.

So whats next? What will Viacom do with this data? Will they now sue individual YouTube posters by their IP addresses ala the recording industry?
Will other content owners follow suit?
Update: Viacom is responding to privacy concerns, stating they "have no ability (and absolutely no desire) to use this data to sue end-users," and stating all the data is covered by a confidentiality agreement. Evidently no one at Viacom will even be able to look at the user data, only the lawyers and court personnel will.
Still, it's disconcerting that with the bang of a judge's gavel, what you thought once was private data and activity on one site now has to be offered up to another company and courtroom for inspection. And there's no guarantee that the next time a website has to turn over user logs the data will be protected by a confidentiality agreement or that the company getting that data won't take action against users.

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