In my post The data flow wars I wrote
...data, and the extraction and refining of that data to support commercial communications is about to become mainstream - this new currency will becme the black gold of the 21st Century - in the future we will fight over oil, food, water and data. If we are living in a world that is increasingly networked, if we are living in a world where social intraction is a primary function online and on the mobile and on converged platforms, then you need data analytics that can understand these social data flows.
So - ladies and genl'men tonite in the Blue corner we have the master of disaster, Gooooooooooooogle and in the Red we have the play it again sam, faster than you can say wow that was a double combination Youuuuuuuuuuuuuu Tuuuuuuuuuuube.
Its gonna get painful
The internet giant Google is being forced to hand over the personal information of every person who has ever watched a video on the YouTube website as part of a billion-dollar court case in the US.
A judge in New York has ordered that Google, which owns YouTube, must pass on the details of more than 100 million people - many of them in the UK - to Viacom, the US broadcasting company which owns channels including MTV and Nickelodeon.
The data will include unique internet addresses, email accounts and the history of every video watched on the website, giving Viacom's experts the ability to conduct a detailed examination of the viewing habits of millions of people around the world.
Via the Guardian
and its no laughing matter.
Kurt Opsahl, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation
The court's erroneous ruling is a setback to privacy rights, we urge Viacom to back off this overbroad request and Google to take all steps necessary to challenge this order and protect the rights of its users
Google correctly argued that the data should not be disclosed because of the users’ privacy concerns, Kurt Opshal said in a EFF blog post