Google has cut a deal with Viacom and the other parties suing it for copyright infringement to protect private information of YouTube users. Now, about scouring that 12 TB or so of data.

Viacom sought all YouTube viewing data, as well as YouTube's source code, business models, and its kitchen sink as a part of its discovery process for the court suit. Earlier this month, a judge ordered Google to hand over video-viewing data. Google and Viacom have been in negotiations as to how to do so. Viacom wanted everything, including IP addresses, but Google argued that providing such data would violate user privacy.

Under the terms of the deal, specific YouTube user data such as user IDs and IP addresses will be replaced by a substitute "unique value" so Viacom can correlate the data to what it wants.

Still looming over Google's head is what YouTube employees have viewed and uploaded and in what context. If employees were consistently uploading copyrighted materials, Viacom could make a clear case that YouTube was intentionally violating copyright. 

For more:
- MarketWatch reports on YouTube data privacy [1] deal

Related articles:
Google and Viacom fight over YouTube employee records [1]
Preliminaries in Viacom v. YouTube [1]