Thus far, Viacom has stated that only outside lawyers would have access to the data, and it would only use the information in its lawsuit against the search engine giant, according to the New York Times.

Still the fact remains that Viacom will be receiving a list showing the unique IP address of every user of YouTube and what videos they watched. It doesn’t take a giant leap of imagination to foresee the problems such a list can be in the hands of a giant media company out to protect its assets.

In this post-Napster world I’m sure many people, upon hearing the news, began seeing lawsuits sent out in an effort to entice scared individuals to pay up in a settlement fee rather than face the threat of tens of thousands of dollars in fines.

That’s unlikely to happen — unlike in the Recording Industry Association of America’s lawsuits, there is no distribution occurring.

Viewers who watched the video were not physically sharing it with friends, so individuals are not likely to be targeted with lawsuits.

What people should be taking away from this case is a reinforcement of the idea that they should always be aware of what they’re doing when they’re surfing the Net.

Anybody who’s spent any amount of time on the Web knows that it’s very easy to think yourself invisible and untraceable, able to say and do nearly anything you want without it coming back to you.

It’s what fuels message board “trolls” that spend their time attempting to make others miserable in a quest for the “lulz.”

The truth, however, is that you always leave a trail, as anyone with a modicum of technology know-how is aware. Even those who utilize extreme measures to protect their anonymity — such as Tor servers, or servers that allow a user to connect to the Net anonymously — know that it’s impossible to completely wipe your tracks. Somewhere there’s still a log that can connect you to your activities if someone digs deep and fast enough.

It’s true that it would take major dedication — and several court orders — for a person or an organization to put together a full and accurate look at what a person’s been doing on the Internet. The likelihood of someone going to all that effort is probably nearly zero, barring a person’s association with some target in the war on terror.

Still, it’s something to keep in mind. The stories of people being burned by photos they uploaded to social networking sites are becoming rampant.

These incidences show that many simply can’t understand that, as much as they may use the Internet to gather information on anything they want, so too can others use it to find things about them.

So much of the Internet is squarely in legally nebulous territory, and so many people visit these gray sites, that it’s probably worth taking a second or two before you click any link that may be a little sketchy.

For those who felt a little bit of dread when they heard about the court’s decision, it’s worth thinking about exactly why they felt that way. Perhaps it’s a sign that a person was doing something that they know they shouldn’t have been.

I’m not advocating that people radically change their habits. I’m not saying that what they were watching or doing was necessarily wrong.

I just think it’s important for people to keep the consequences of their actions in mind.

Anonymous does not really mean anonymous.

James Harrison is a State News columnist. Reach him at harri310@msu.edu.