MatthewHSE - 6:56 pm on Jul 15, 2008 (gmt 0)

I guess if there was a criminal living on your block it would be ok for the police to search all the houses in your neighborhood right? How else are they to determine what is in the houses?

A more accurate analogy would be to suppose there was a criminal living in your dorm room.

I am looking at the numbers and the damage and I see no real damage.

It's not up to you to see the damage - you don't have access to the information Viacom has.

They assume for every view of their material on Youtube that it is minus one view on their network and that isn't the case at all.

I don't know that they're assuming that. What they seem to be assuming is that *if* you're going to watch some of their material, it ought to be on their network. And that's a valid assumption.

Just another civil liberty stomped on and you are cheering.

I don't see any civil liberties involved here. Everyone on YouTube is there by their own choice and watched the clips they did by their own choice. And the Google Privacy Policy [google.com] states pretty clearly that they can hand over personal information if "such information is reasonably necessary to (a) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request..."