YouTube Discovery

Normally, a discovery order in a lawsuit, even one between two big companies, would not be particularly newsworthy. But when a federal judge orders Google to turn over to Viacom every record of every video ever played on YouTube, including the content of the video, the dates and times of the play, and all of the user details retained by Google (including account names and IP addresses) that's enough to raise an eyebrow.

Think for a moment about your use of YouTube. I've used it to see music videos of songs I liked and clips of movies I'm curious about. I can't think of other uses that might have infringed on copyrights of any particular value but there might be more than that. I'm beginning to think that Larry Lessig is right -- we need a fundamental reform of our copyright laws, because the internet has turned us all into criminals.