How do you spend your time on YouTube? Do you watch mostly original material from the likes of 'smosh', or do you prefer reliving clips of your favourite music videos and TV shows?

For those who fit into the latter category, you may have been somewhat alarmed by last week's announcement. Google has received a court order to hand over details of every video ever watched on YouTube, and the IP addresses of those who watched them.

The problem is that a lot of the good stuff on YouTube has not found its way there by legal means. If that content gets removed, or at least scared away, we could be left with just the homemade stuff – so much of which makes the Adam and Joe Show look like George Lucas.

Real threat?

But is the threat from Viacom real, and should we all expect to be hearing from lawyers in the next few months? Probably not, and here's why.

As always, it's a matter of copyright law, and that has become a hotly debated matter in the internet age. First and foremost, though, it's not the physical act of watching pirated content that matters, it's how it got there in the first place.

When you watch streaming content from the web, it will usually entail having a temporary local copy on your hard disk. But that is not considered an infringement in itself where it is an integral part of the viewing process.

So even if the content wasn't legally made available on the web, there is very little chance of anyone being sued for watching illicit snippets of Viacom-owned shows. Otherwise, virtually everyone who has ever accessed YouTube would be liable – and that is clearly ridiculous.

TV clips

But with copying being the main issue (it is called copyright after all), those who upload TV show clips could be in greater trouble.

Only the owner of the copyright for a particular piece of content is allowed to 'copy, issue copies, rent or lend, perform, show, play, broadcast or adapt the copyright work', according to Out-law.com. Uploading a clip grabbed from TV clearly crosses into this territory.

Recording programmes off the telly for timeshifting purposes still fits within the 'temporary local copy' case already described.