Twentieth Century Fox has subpoenaed YouTube, demanding that the site provides the details of users who uploaded four episodes of "24" and twelve episodes of "The Simpsons". The request is dated January 18th, but was only discovered today - it reads:

On or about January 8, 2007, Fox became aware that a subscriber ("the Subscriber") of YouTube Inc.s' Internet-based service uploaded pirated copies of the works onto YouTube, making it available for illegal viewing over the Internet to anyone who wishes to watch it. Fox has not authorized this distribution or display of the works. The subpoena request YouTube, Inc. to disclose information sufficient to identify the Subscriber so that Fox can stop this infringing activity.

What's worrying about this is that Fox is going after the uploaders themselves, rather than just issuing a DMCA and getting the clips pulled. Google is known for protecting its users' details to the greatest extent possible - last year, the company refused to hand user's search queries over to the Department of Justice. With that in mind, it seems unlikely that they'll concede. In fact, YouTube's success seems so heavily based around permitting uploads of copyrighted material (and then quickly seeking deals with the content creators), that legal actions against individual users could cripple its growth.

That said, this isn't the first time a company has subpoenaed YouTube: Paramount Pictures successfully got them to hand over the details of YouTube user Chris Moukarbel, who was was sued for copyright infringement on June 16th 2006 for uploading dialog from the movie “Twin Towers”. That was before the Google acquisition, of course, and things have changed substantially since.