YouTube is one of the most popular sites on the web and with some 10 hours' worth of content being uploaded every minute it involves incredible amounts of data.
So imagine just how long a list would be of the viewing log of every video on the site, including the IP addresses and login details of everyone who had ever watched a clip.
This is exactly what a US court has ordered Google, YouTube's owner, to hand over to Viacom, a company attempting to establish that most people using YouTube are doing so to view copyrighted content.
US media conglomorate Viacom has long complained that YouTube was profiting by showing copyrighted content illegally and claimed that more than 150,000 unauthorised clips had been viewed 1.5 billion times.
Viacom took the case to court last month. Google refutes Viacom's claims and said that YouTube "goes far beyond its legal obligations in assisting content owners to protect their works".
Mark Mulligan of Jupiter Research said that though YouTube had problems with content being uploaded to the site illegally, it was attempting to do all it could to be entirely legitimate.
"YouTube has done a really good job of transitioning towards legitimacy, despite the fact that there is still widespread un-licensed professional content on its site.
"It doesn't look or feel like an illegal content destination to users and its corporate parentage, numerous content licences and established relationships with many content owners certainly give it significant legitimacy," Mulligan said.
However, if Viacom were to use the information in YouTube's logs to go after people who had uploaded or even simply just viewed unauthorised content then people could begin to steer clear of YouTube.
"But, if YouTube users start finding themselves subject to the same sort of legal action as Kazaa users, the site could start feeling very different to consumers," he said.
Viacom insists that it will not go after individuals and only its legal team will have access to the data, which it wants to establish that a significant amount of copyrighted content is watched on the site.
Privacy campaigners, though, were unhappy with the court's ruling.
"The Court's erroneous ruling is a set-back to privacy rights, and will allow Viacom to see what you are watching on YouTube. 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," the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a statement.
The court ruled that YouTube didn't have to give up details of its search algorithm to Viacom, though, heeding Google's claims that this was a trade secret and shouldn't be revealed.
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Claire Woffenden, Editor
