Fuck Viacom? Why not Fuck the United States Government?

If you watch a lot of YouTube videos, like I do, you will have noticed that there's a lawsuit going on right now between YouTube and Viacom over copyright. Viacom asserts that YouTube built its business, including most of its initial revenue, on content that it had no right to distribute, and content that Viacom actually lost sales on because people were getting it for free. The United States courts haven't made a ruling yet, but what they have done is rule that YouTube has to give Viacom a whole bunch of information, in order for Viacom to build their case, and this information includes personal information about YouTube account holders. The account holders never consented to having their information shared in this way.

This, according to many YouTube users, is a violation of privacy. Thus, a great many YouTube users have got together to create a campaign to boycott Viacom. They argue that because Viacom is making unreasonable demands, it's a bad company, and in order to stop them, and send a message to other companies, the YouTube collective userbase needs to punish Viacom by some kind of boycott or something.

Here's my problem with that scenario. Viacom is a company, I presume publicly traded, but I don't have just 5 seconds at the moment to Google it. Even though I had 5 seconds to write that last disclaimer sentence. Fuck it, just hang on a second.

Yes.

Okay, I'm back.
So Viacom is a publicly traded company, and like any company with shareholders who aren't batshit insane sole proprietors, it needs to protect its own interests. This includes asking the government if it could please make YouTube give them some information that would really help them with their case.

After all, if Viacom has been damaged by YouTube, then they would by all rights deserve to get some of those profits back, which have been wrongfully taken from them.

No harm in asking, right?

Except when the government says yes, you can have access to information about users. Information which normally, due to privacy considerations, we couldn't let you have, but because we're the courts, we're allowed to break the rules and here you go. By the way, YouTube, fuck you for being a haven for dissenters and alternating viewpoints. As the government, we are officially against that.

So by now, you can probably see that it's obviously stupid for the collective of YouTube users, the YouTube Users Union, as the church of the cough predicts will soon come into existence, to try to do something to hurt Viacom. For one thing, it isn't Viacom that has done anything wrong. They just asked. For another thing, even if they manage to get Viacom to back down, there are at least one or two other Multinational Multimedia Conglomerates who will now have no legal reason not to pursue the same information, because Viacom by backing down has set no legal precedent. For another thing, Viacom finances some entertaining content which I would prefer to watch. I don't want to boycott, um, hang on again while I Google what it is that Viacom finances* .... Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.

*Note that I write "finances" and not "produces", "creates", "puts out", or any creative word like that. Viacom is too big to "create" anything. It's the individuals who make stuff. Viacom just makes channels for them to get to their consumers. That's still a very big deal, and an extremely valuable contribution, but I feel that the distinction is necessary.

Okay, so I've lost my train of thought, but I think you get the picture that the evil being done here is being done by the courts and government, not Viacom. And yet, YouTube users are all too ready to go to war against Viacom. Why not go to war against the US Government?

No, I don't mean real war, which you might lose. Plus, if you had a revolution, you would face all the same problems over again in whatever new system you set up. I mean a lobbying war.

Instead of boycotting Viacom, boycott the DMV. Boycott the US court system. Boycott the police. No, don't really do that, because that would be stupid, but it's about as smart as boycotting whatever it is that Viacom puts out.