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For someone who has more than 1,700 videos on a YouTube portal, I need help in figuring out a story that I read today on SFGate.

In a ruling that could have serious privacy implications, a federal judge has ruled that popular Internet video site YouTube must hand over details about what people watch online.

The decision filed Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton in New York is part of a $1 billion copyright-infringement lawsuit that Viacom Inc., the entertainment group that owns Comedy Central, VH1 and Nickelodeon, among others, filed last year against Google, which owns YouTube.

The suit says YouTube hasn't done enough to remove copyrighted material from its site and is making money off it.

Pretty much, the third paragraph is what I'm concerned about.

I know that a lot of people go to my portal to watch tournament videos (almost 3,000 subscribers). But if video games falls under the "copyrighted material" category, and if Viacom gets their way in forcing YouTube to delete all of those videos, then I'd feel a mixture of sadness and anger. I'm sure I wouldn't be alone, as there are a few others that spend their time uploading videos at a rate comparable to me.

So if someone can help me out here, let me know if I should be worried.

Now that the Championship Gaming Series' sophomore regular season is over, it's time to make a guess as to who is going home with the hardware. And I'm not going to waste any time, let's do this!

By the way, I should forewarn people that usually my predictions are 1 percent correct, and the opposite happens almost all of the time.

Semifinal contests: It is scheduled to be Carolina vs. New York, and San Francisco vs. Dallas.

I'll start with Carolina vs. New York. Amazingly, despite the fact that Carolina is backing into the playoffs (if you can even call it "backing in") with a five-game losing streak, they can take solace in knowing that they're one of the two teams that gave New York a loss this season. New York leads the series, 2-1.

The biggest point differential comes in "Dead or Alive 4" female, where New York's Tanya Underwood is 3-0 against Katherine Gunn this season.

There's been a lot of tidal waves with the "Counter-Strike Source" encounters. One team gets a blowout, then the other, then the other. I'm guessing that the playoff battle will be a lot closer.

If Carolina wins, it would be one of the biggest upsets the league has seen, this year or last. You don't lose five straight and then all of a sudden reach the championship match. That's unheard of in any sport. Based on that alone, I'm going with New York to reach the title game. Here's something else, which has been noted by other observers: Someone always seems to step up for New York. One day it's Cardell Thomas, the next day is "Comeback Dan" Otto. Another day, it's Underwood.

The other match is San Francisco vs. Dallas.

Dallas leads the series, 2-1.

Despite Dallas having a 9-3 record, I think this is a closer matchup than the standings would indicate. If there were to be an upset among the two semifinal contests, it would be this one.

San Francisco can certainly do it. They have one of the best players in the league (Vanessa Arteaga) and a good "FIFA 08" player (Alessandro Avallone), and they should be able to win their encounters. By the way, can you imagine how much Arteaga is wanting to face Michelle Pleet again? Pleet was the person that handed Arteaga (11-1) her first loss in league play.

The big money game, Counter-Strike, will determine who makes it to the next round. Dallas has the best Counter-Strike squad in the league this year (9-3), and I think they'll live up to that moniker. This is probably going to be the closest match of the night, and if it goes into overtime, I would not be surprised at all. Something along the lines of 22-21, or 23-22 is plausible.

I'll have the individual awards in a future entry.

Later today, I'll have my predictions for the remainder of the 2008 C.G.S season. They'll include the following categories:

* -- Playoff predictions
* -- Most valuable player award
* -- Rookie of the year award
* -- General manager of the year award

My MVP award has been made known for a week now, but I'll tell you the one person who could win it over Emmanuel "Master" Rodriguez.

RANCHO CUCAMONGA - So much could be gained from Saturday's "Mario Kart Wii" tournament here at Shuffle and Cut Games. Even though there were just seven participants (full disclosure: I was one of the entrants), there was enough done during the competition that, I hope, other tournament organizers take note of.

Multi-player events: Three-player and 4-player competitions will not work. Well, they can work, but there is an obvious frame rate differential. Also, the karts and bikes have a noticeable lag, to the point that drifts must be held longer than normal in order to get a mini turbo.

How much does this hurt? A lot, especially in Mario Kart where one messed-up turn is essentially the match. These changes make the top bikes in the game -- the Bowser Bike (Flame Runner) and Mach Bike -- less useful than normally intended. Their steering and speed make them two of the best vehicles naturally.

A 1-on-1 competition is the best way to go for a live competition because the intended frame rate remains the same, which leaves the kart and bike usefulness the same as well. There's also another reason:

Item differences: Saturday's tournament had items on Strategic. To the best of our knowledge, we only saw these items come up: Mushrooms (Singles and triples), Shells (Singles and triples), Bananas (Singles and Triples), POW Block, Dark Cloud.

Yes, the Dark Cloud did appear. However, that came up during a 4-player race, and not a 2-player race. The same thing happened for the POW Block, which leads me to believe that the items are relevant to the match currently happening.

In a 2-player race, it was mushrooms, shells and bananas. But there was also a problem that occurred.

Out of those three items, the shell is the only naturally offensive item (you can throw the banana forward, yes, but it's naturally a defensive item). All but one time that a person got a shell, it was green, meaning that the player had to be accurate in shooting it in order to hit the other person.

So if items are on Strategic, in a 2-player race, then it's 90 percent about driving. This is a big change from "Mario Kart Double Dash," where Basic-item races were about 75 percent driving.

= = =

Can "Mario Kart Wii" be a tournament game?

Any game can be made into a tournament, and that includes M.K. Wii. However, tournament organizers need to be very careful in how the races are coordinated. I think we did a good job in deleting the bad courses (Grumble Volcano, Dry Dry Ruins, Dry Dry Desert, Mushroom Gorge, Shy Guy Beach. Dwindling the items to just a select few also helped. So now, it's a matter of getting the competitors to play.