Maven Mapper's

Google and Viacom have agreed to keep the identities of all those people that Viacom would argue illegally shared their content on Google's YouTube video sharing network.

Google said it had now agreed to provide plaintiffs' attorneys for Viacom and a class-action group led by the Football Association of England a version of a massive viewership database that blanks out YouTube username and Internet address data that could be used to identify individual video watchers.

"We have reached agreement with Viacom and the class-action group," Google spokesman Ricardo Reyes said. "They have agreed to let us anonymize YouTube user data," he said.

Reuters

But Viacom does not necessarily want to upset its consumers any more than they already have by not enabling their content to be uploaded on to YouTube, especially shows, such as The Daily Show.

So after taking Google to task for buying YouTube, a company with a serious content ownership flaw in the business plan, they are now delving through the class action lawsuit with kids gloves, hoping to protect their content rights while keeping their viewers (and advertisers.)  With this level of civility, you would almost expect lawyers from opposing sides to send each other personalized gifts along with evidence and data.