On Wednesday, Viacom came one step closer to winning the lawsuit when U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton ordered Google to turn over user data to Viacom for videos uploaded and played on the popular Web site.

The data contains information on users’ video-viewing habits which Viacom plans to use to crack down on video piracy. It’s been reported that Viacom will only be able to see what IP addresses viewed and uploaded videos.

Although Viacom stated that user names are not their official pursuit, YouTube might have to turn over all data with IP-address records included. Google can’t put up much of an argument in this case because, in a post on its Google Public Policy Blog in February, the company stated that IP addresses should not be considered personal data.

For many users of YouTube, this court ruling screams violation of privacy since Viacom can actually use the IP addresses to establish the identity of the person or persons accessing content at any given time.

Viacom claims that they won’t use the information to seek out individual violators. If that’s true, why do they need the information of YouTube users when they can possibly make the case against the Web site using the sheer number of copyrightable materials?

Viacom shouldn’t need to know who’s watching what to prove that copyright laws were broken — the number of times the video has been viewed is clearly displayed below it.

There’s no doubt that this ruling is a violation of user privacy, but since Web sites aren’t taking steps to ensure user privacy, that responsibility falls on the user. Nothing on the Internet is anonymous and users have to expect the unexpected when it comes to the Internet.

Viacom said it wouldn’t go after individual users, but if they choose to and you aren’t one of those people who uploaded 117 clips of “The Daily Show” or one of Viacom’s other hit network shows, then there’s nothing to worry about. Besides, they would have to go through great measures to seek out a user’s identity.

YouTube — not its users — should be held accountable for the copyrighted material that is on their Web site. People review the content of those videos before they are posted and they can choose not to display it.

If YouTube knowingly accepted the posts of the copyrightable material, then they should suffer the consequences. Users of YouTube shouldn’t have their identities compromised because of a mistake on the Web site’s behalf.

If anything good comes out of this case, it might be a better definition of what is considered personal data.