Another blow to user protections

I'm dismayed by a Judge's decision in the Viacom/Google-YouTube lawsuit. Yesterday a judged ruled in favor of Google turning over copies of all videos that were removed for any reason, IP addresses of all users, with log in id's, and viewing history, and...what I find particularly interesting, on page 23 of the ruling (.pdf posted by Wired) is the argument Viacom makes to challenge the term "Private." Viacom argues that if you post a video private but then refer to that url in a discussion forum you are giving up the rights to privacy, yet there is no definition of the boundries to that...so if I post my url on my email signature and send it out to say 50 people in my address book - all of whom I know btw - is that no longer "private" or if I post my URL on say....Twitter does that mean its no longer private although I only have say....47 followers all of whom I know? I was glad to see the Judge denied this claim - somewhat. She ruled they could have the "non-content" information of these videos. So I am thinking this means they can have user ID, IP addresses, how many times its been viewed and by what IP address and the tags and comments?? Although tags and comments may border on "content data."

Also, if you look to the end to the conclusions you'll see all the rulings and its clear Google worked hard to protect their stuff but looks to me like they put their users out to swim on their own! Now on one hand I can't really disagree with this...ultimately the blame should not fall on service providers short of negligence on their part should they choose to ignore laws being broken the ultimate fault should fall to the users who break the laws. On the other, I just find it frustrating that those law abiding citizens who like to post videos of their family vacations find refuge in YouTube suddenly are under the microscope for copyright infringement both in posting and viewing.

Overall I don't know about you but I find it unsettling. While I recognize privacy on the internet is a misnomer the truth is we all have some expectations of privacy in certain places - email, network storage, websites, etc. Is it too much to expect privacy in such places as YouTube? If it is too high an expectation, then truthfully, I have to agree with organizations such as...say, Maricopa CCD, who hesitate in forming alliances with Gmail and Apple iTunesU. Its a running joke in our district about how long the Google - district wide student email contract has been lingering in legal but now I see...and I can't blame them one bit!!

When are the companies like Viacom and the major Recording industry giants going to stop spending so much time and money on seeking retributions against their customers and start embracing the 21st century technology and find a way to make it work for everyone? Seems to me if they stop their "buy CD's" mantra and go where the users are - online - they may find bliss! I liken it to someone wanting to hang onto the 8-track cassette - come one- its time to move on! What do you think?