Should a major corporation have access to all your viewing habits on YouTube? Well, it's going to unless a federal appeals court steps in.

Some federal judge in New York seems to think it's a good idea for the Viacom Corporation (owners of MTV, Paramount Pictures, BET, and all thoughts you have between the hours of 6 and 9pm) to take a peek at the entire YouTube database. If you're a registered user, Viacom will have your information. If you've watched anything on the site, they'll have your IP address.

This is all part of a highly publicized lawsuit in which Viacom says its copyrights have been repeatedly violated by YouTube. (And in turn Google, it's deep-pocketed owner.) Viacom wants a billion dollars for its trouble and suffering.

So why do they need all your information to argue their case? P.C. magazine explains it this way:

"Viacom claims that it must have access to the entire database in order to see whether users are watching infringing videos more than they are watching non-infringing content. If they are watching more videos with copyrighted data that might prove that Google had an incentive to keep them live on YouTube and did not actively work to remove them, according to Viacom."

This order will certainly be appealed, and, with any luck, overturned. If it's not, I have to believe it will change the way websites operate. Let's be honest. Are you likely to sign up as a user on as many websites if you know your personal information could wind up in someone else's hands every time a lawsuit is filed? And how much information would you be willing to give when you did register? I suspect it would be much less.

I realize my few answers on a form among a billion other people's is not really that big a deal. I don't expect the Paramount police to land on my doorstep looking for compensation from the time I watched five minutes of Indiana Jones on YouTube.

But there's a principle here. It's called "mind your own damn business!" It becomes harder to enforce when the courts start making our online habits someone else's business.

Am I overreacting here? What are your thoughts?