OK First off its the internet, every site you go to has your IP address, your email address, and anything else it needs, anytime you type in your address to a site and click submit, whether or not you complete the transaction or sale what have you, they have your address. They need and want the info so they can see who is posting and uploading their copyrighted material. It costs a hell of a lot of money to buy a copyright so yes they are going to enforce it and be the only ones making money off of it, because yes, youtube does make money, LOTS of money, from the advertisements on their site. So Viacom is simply saying that you are making money with your site, and our material will not be on there helping you make money.
And your in some huge uproar about this shit, what the fuck do you have on YouTube that is so god damn valuable? You sign up, you enter a screen name, password, email address, you did that signing up here, you realized that Viacom is going to have no more information then what Chuck, Monkeystyle, and This Guy have? They wont have anymore information then like V1 said, we got all that shit too. So does your email service, so does wwe.com, ebay.com, they all got it, its all recorded somewhere. Everything you do on the internet, is recorded, whether it be by the vBulletin software, or the coding for whatever.
Your making some huge thing out of nothing really. I dont see it as an invasion of privacy, YouTube is a public place, you upload what you want others to see, so I dont get how that is private. So they get a password, they are a large company, you think they are going to risk their whole business selling some 17 year olds password?
They are getting IP addresses like I said, to prosecute the people distributing and uploading copyrighted material. Same way the courts started putting people in jail for DLing music, I dont know if thats still a big thing or not, but its the internet, you log on, and the first place you go knows where you live, simple as that, if that is so worrying to you, log off.