New York - Media conglomerate Viacom (NYSE: VIA) has issued a statement claiming that it "has not asked for and will not be obtaining any personally identifiable information of any YouTube user" in the course of its $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against the site.

However, as Groklaw and others have reported, the judge in the case has indicated in court documents that Viacom did indeed seek such information from YouTube (NASD: GOOG), including its "Logging" database, which "contains, for each instance a video is watched, the unique 'login ID' of the user who watched it, the time when the user started to watch the video, the internet protocol address other devices connected to the internet use to identify the user's computer ('IP address'), and the identifier for the video."

Viacom added in its statement that the "personally identifiable information that YouTube collects from its users will be stripped from the data before it is transferred to Viacom," and that the company "will use the data exclusively for the purpose of proving our case against You Tube and Google."

But NewTeeVee pointed out that a YouTube blog post last week notes that, although the judge agreed to make YouTube hand over personally identifiable user data, per Viacom's request, "our lawyers have asked their lawyers to let us remove that information before we hand over the data they're seeking."

Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/2ykpf (Viacom statement)

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080709044510241

http://snipurl.com/2ykpm (NewTeeVee)

http://www.youtube.com/blog?entry=Gh2N9xyKK8k