Youtubers Strike Back: Viacom Backlash

Enraged YouTube users are protesting a controversial court ruling last week by uploading homemade "Viacom sucks" videos, and calling for mass boycotts of Viacom entertainment vehicles such as Paramount Pictures and MTV.

"Boycott Viacom! Fight back for your privacy rights!" proclaimed one video found by BetaNews on the YouTube site early this evening.

Rather, the video-sharing site's users have launched an expletive-laden counterattack, calling for a boycott of the media giant.

In the past week, the number of videos associated with the search keyword "Viacom" has increased by 871, more than 28.5%. Already on Monday, 341 new videos associated with the "Viacom" search keyword have been uploaded. (In a subsequent search, the number dropped to 320, suggesting that some anti-Viacom videos are being removed.) Mostly, the videos are critical of Viacom.

Over the long Fourth of July weekend and afterward, YouTube users took the opportunity to consistently refresh YouTube's growing cache of anti-Viacom content, with materials that include new videos exhorting users to band together in a boycott covering Viacom's Web site, Paramount films (including the new Indiana Jones film that premiered in May), MTV cable networks, and other Viacom-owned properties.

"Viacom has not asked for and will not be obtaining any personally identifiable information of any YouTube user," reads a posting that has meanwhile popped up on Viacom's site.

Viacom's case centers upon allegations from Viacom that YouTube and its owner Google are guilty of massive copyright infringement for allegedly allowing unauthorized viewing of move clips and soccer highlights.

For YouTube users who are downloading videos from behind network routers or corporate gateways -- and there are untold numbers of them out there -- the IP address refers to the gateway rather than to a specific PC. Moreover, only those users with registered YouTube accounts have login IDs. If you want to download video from YouTube, it isn't even necessary to sign up for an account. But you do need a YouTube account if you want to do such things as upload or comment on videos, or keep track of favorites you've viewed before.

Could the YouTube users' protests be working already? "Viacom has been in discussions with Google to develop a framework to share [user] data," Viacom now says in a statement on its Web site. "We are committed to a process that will not only comply with the Court's confidentiality order, but that will also meet our strongest possible Internet privacy protections."