What exactly constitutes "personally identifiable" is a very complex issue -- almost anything can be personally identifiable with enough data processing or in combination with other data sources.

The judge and Viacom are the guilty parties here, trying to blame google only distracts from that fact. These are the same people who are working on laws that will mandate ISP logging, allow them to search your laptop and iPod at the airport, etc. Google keeping or not keeping logs isn't going to help you -- it's just running from the problem.

"The judge and Viacom are the guilty parties here"

Are you sure? I swear Google was the one violating copyrights..

They are guilty of harming privacy, which is the topic here.

But they're only "harming privacy" because Google, supposedly, allowed copyright infringement to take place. That's how the law works-- in order to investigate crimes, your privacy is sometimes invaded (when there is due cause).

I'm on your side, though. This philosophy of breaking privacy for investigation doesn't scale with the internet.

This is a civil case though. If my doctor was accused by a patient of overbilling him, would it be acceptable for that patient to peruse (and perhaps leak) my medical records during discovery? No.

But for some reason it's OK for Viacom to see my name on every YouTube link I've ever clicked. Why are some things private and other things not?

If the doctor was accused of negligence, the court would be able to requisition all the medical records of his patients. (Actually this might not be true of a doctor, but in any other industry this would be perfectly legal.)

We're talking about YouTube being the accused, not an individual anonymous user. Am I understanding that right?

Honestly, I wouldn't be at all upset if Google turned only IP addresses over to Viacom. It's my username I don't want them to have.

So if the judge believes that the ip addresses are useless for identifying users, why does he want viacom to get them? Doesn't make any sense?

Sucks to be Alma Whitten right now. Hope all her stock's already vested...

Your concept of how Google works is way off. These blog posts are not off-the-cuff remarks by random employees -- a whole team of people put together that policy and statement as part of some other legal battle.