Source: Tom's Guide | Keywords: Viacom, boycott, YouTube | Themes: Business, Networking, The Internet
Last week we reported that in a billion dollar lawsuit against Viacom, Google had been ordered to turn over all YouTube user histories to the American media company. The ruling raised privacy issues and Google protested that by handing over users’ log ins, IP addresses and details of the videos they’d watched was an invasion of their privacy. However the judge overseeing the case quickly dismissed this claim.
This week videos have begun to appear on Google’s video sharing site from users protesting the ruling and asking others to boycott Viacom.
A quick search for “Viacom” on YouTube pulls up a whole range of anti-Viacom videos from “Viacom vs You” to “Viacom is not your friend”. In fact a lot of them, are in response to a video called “The F**k Viacom Campaign”.
It seems the general sentiment from users is that while Viacom is entitled to have its copyrighted material removed from Google’s site, the company has no right to go through their viewing histories. While Viacom is going hell for leather to prove YouTubers are watching more copyrighted material than home videos of kittens or dogs, the company’s users are definitely unhappy with the way they’re going about it. At the end of the day, the YouTubers viewing the material are their customers.
Many of the clips encourage users to join them in boycotting Viacom, its subsidiaries and sponsors and links to a boycott Viacom website (this page can be found at http://boycottviacom.blogspot.com/).
What do you think of Viacom being allowed access to viewing histories? Do you believe the company should do what they have to do to win the suit against Google or is this one step too far? Let us know in the comments section below.
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The immense traffic would send a quantitative signal to Viacom (namely the number of pissed off customers).
Not every IP address logged necessarily tells of a person who sat and watched a full length movie. All you have to do is click on a link, and the videos typically auto-start. You could then immediately click another video link and have never actually even viewed the material.
This opens up a huge can of worms for online privacy rights. Now any website you visit that records IP addresses, can be ordered to give out any/all information on their user's IP identities without a warrant being issued for such a search in regards to each individual person. Therefore, companies, or even the government perhaps, could order Google to give up IP information on anyone who ever searched for "XYZ" and then use that IP address to identify a person's location, without ever being issued a warrant for that person.
Take things like this, and throw in the "Patriot Act", and good ole Uncle Sam (Bush Administration) can do whatever they want. Won't be long before judges start allowing every constitutional right to be shredded apart.
And US court dont have any rights over users not from US whatsoever and revealing personal informations (and yes even IP is personal information and as it is also protected, at least in europe) could break laws in other countries.
As to the boycott effort, it will fail. How many people stopped buying new and used music when the RIAA began its suing? I know of only myself in my community. I also have not and do not illegally download music - those that do are actually encouraging someone out there to buy it first. (I will occasionally pick up a local musicians self-produced CD gladly, as I know they are getting most of my money).
Who out there can tell me all the products Viacom makes? Who are their subsidiaries, and is there a parent company we should be aware of? How much of your daily life would you have to rip out to boycott them? I don't have the answer without doing a lot of research - and I know that most people are unwilling to go without what they want and/or desire.
Uh - no.
http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_ [...] i?privacy9
And while we are at it, let's also drop these stupid 'search warrant' requirements for the government agencies.
After all, we are nothing but cattle raised to consume whatever crap Big $$ corporations shove down the chute.
That's why Europe makes better cars, why Korea has a faster Internet and we can't even win a war against a 3rd world nation without going broke :-)
Cheers to y'all.