Watch What You Watchin' - Viacom v. YouTube Redux

In the wake of Viacom's $1 BILLION copyright infringement lawsuit settlement, YouTube has been ordered to turn over 12 TERABYTES of database information of every video ever watched on the site, complete with user IDs and IP addresses.   In the wake of massive protest and fear, Google/YouTube reached an agreement to "mask" the user data, hoping to alleviate some concerns over this Big Brother type of intrusion into users private search and viewing history.

"Viacom and the other litigants have backed off their demand for
YouTube user viewing histories," Google said in a statement. "We have
reached agreement to anonymize the data."

However, Slashdot reports that there is no such thing as an "anonymized dataset," meaning that there is no real way to "mask" or protect an individuals privacy rights once a database of this nature is turned over.  While it may protect some users, it's still likely to reveal some users and what they surfed.  Given all of this, it's still quite unclear why Viacom needs this data in the first place.  The legal question is whether Google infringed on copyright.  Why should Google's log files be necessary to determine that? 

Watch what your watchin' people, its a brave new world out there.......