Joanna is, of course, disputing the claim.

The video is still up, but now Viacom gets access to her video statistics. The worst part is the fear Joanna has that something she slaved and sweat over could be taken away from her. "I'm just a scared that my little film will be lost in the shadow of the hulking monolith...," she wrote on her blog. Also on her blog is a comment by another filmmaker indicating Joanna isn't the only filmmaker Viacom has fraudulently targeted in this manner.

YouTube used to be cool but the site allowing actions like this show how much it's become just another co-opted drek-hole... all because they're too cheap to hire enough people to vet either the uploads or the corporate takedowns.

Below, a screenshot of the creepy and baseless stake-claiming.

Viacom Wants To Steal My Film [Channel Federator Raw]
Juxtaposer [YouTube]

Nonsense. How typically self-important of Internet users, to think that Viacom cares about the dozens of South Park videos they watched. Viacom is not being disingenuous in saying it never meant to violate Internet users' privacy, I've come to believe.

So why are they seeking the data? The case revolves around the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which gives Internet service providers a "safe harbor" for hosting copyrighted content. But that protection rests on the notion that the people who operate a website don't really know what's on it.

If Viacom can show YouTube cofounders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, or other top officials, viewed copyrighted content while logged into the site, wouldn't that weaken YouTube's rights under the DMCA? Even worse, what if Hurley or Chen uploaded copyrighted clips themselves?

Tellingly, in reaching a deal to protect YouTube users' privacy, Viacom and Google excluded data about YouTube and Google employees' use of the site.

Google's best defense might be to go negative, airing reports about Viacom executives' use of the site. That might not give YouTube any more legal protection — but it would make its legal foes squirm. Viacom's Ifilm subsidiary, for one, has been caught hosting copyrighted content without permission.

There's one thing that might save Chad and Steve: They've never seemed that interested in online video. The pair, both former PayPal employees, stumbled onto the idea, and conceived of YouTube first as a site to host shopping videos for eBay listings, then as a video-dating site. They've always been more interested in cynically exploiting online video as a business than exploring the potential of the medium. An announcement of Google's sale to YouTube is one of the few times the two actually made an appearance on it.

So there's the irony: The less Chad and Steve used YouTube, the more likely they'll come out of this lawsuit unscathed. But Viacom's legal strategy suggests that every video they viewed will count against them.

After reviewing the episodes, Crowley found that the were nearly all shot at the Spike TV Guy's Choice award show, a Viacom event to which the crew was invited. (Even we posted some footage of their interview with MySpace vixen Tila Tequila). Looking up the contact info on the takedown notices, Crowley noticed that the issuer was just five blocks away from the Mahalo office in Santa Monica, and after some phone calls was assured it would all be back online shortly.

Under the language of the DMCA, rightsholders can be held liable for issuing improper takedown notices. Mahalo, however, won't be taking Viacom to court. Instead, Crowley chose to "insist that they buy us sushi." And not just the cheap stuff — he's looking to dine on abalone.

• Does the fact that you're screening Tropic Thunder for a bunch of local tech reporters rather than the usual film critics suggest that you're not particularly confident in the film's critical reception?
• How will the lost $450 million financing deal for a slate of movies that would have included Tropic Thunder affect your Paramount movie studio?
• Why do you keep making poor Jeremy Zweig tell reporters that your lawyers didn't ask for YouTube users' personal information when you did, in fact, ask for their usernames and IP addresses — information most Internet users would consider personal? And what's he supposed to say now that you've agreed to mask them?
• Isn't Viacom's investment in social network Flux at best an irrelevancy and at worst a mess?
• Why is Viacom's MTV, after 13 years of trying, incapable of running an online music service anyone wants to use?

Viacom wanted to carve out the records of YouTube employees' video views to show that they knowingly viewed copyrighted content — and in some cases, uploaded it. But Google could easily use its records to show Viacom employees doing exactly the same thing. It would hardly be a shocker: Viacom's Ifilm site is rife with pirated videos, but the site's traffic is too insignificant for copyright holders to get fussed.

Showing Viacom's double standards is an obvious move. What Google's lawyers are probably too naive to contemplate: Scouring YouTube's video logs for truly embarrassing videos viewed by Viacom employees, and leaking them to gossip blogs. That would be a dreadful invasion of privacy, of course — exactly what Viacom was asking for, before it finally backed down.

None of the invited reporters, as best we can tell, are film critics. Instead, they cover technology and business. Here's my bet: Most will show up, if only to get facetime with Viacom's CEO, who rarely makes it to northern California. But if Viacom really wanted to offer local hacks a good time, Zweig should have invited Dauman's son, Philippe Jr. For one thing, Philippe Dauman Jr. works at Google, which means he'd have an interesting perspective on the copyright dispute. And the kid knows how to party. Heck, if Junior shows up, we'll skip the movie and go wherever he leads us. We hang out with journalists far too often, and we're sure he's more fun than the lot who'll show up to the screening.

• Viacom's favorite tech reporters:
• Miguel Helft, New York Times
• Elinor Mills, CNET
• Owen Thomas, Valleywag
• Jackson West, Valleywag
• Scott Morrison, Dow Jones Newswires
• Joe Garofoli, San Francisco Chronicle
• Jessica Guynn, Los Angeles Times
• Rob Hof, BusinessWeek
• Mark Hachman, Ziff-Davis
• John Paczkowski, AllThingsD
• Mark Glaser, PBS
• Peter Burrows, BusinessWeek
• Eric Auchard, Reuters
• Liz Gannes, GigaOm
• Brad Stone, New York Times
• Matt Richtel, New York Times
• Vindu Goel, San Jose Mercury News
• Eric Savitz, Barrons
• Antone Gonsalves, InformationWeek
• Tom Claburn, CMP
• George Anders, Wall Street Journal
• Steve Johnson, San Jose Mercury News

Google and YouTube's entire defense against Viacom's copyright infringement suit posits that even though YouTube employees know there shouldn't be full episodes of the Daily Show on the site, there's no practical way for them to be able to prevent it. Viacom lawyers think the argument is cover for willful ignorance. Now they aim to prove it by showing that YouTube employees themselves viewed and uploaded copyrighted content on YouTube and did nothing about it. Google continues to say it will not hand over data on its employee's viewing habits, but it might not have a choice in the matter. During lawsuits, companies turn over employee's private information contained in memos, emails, and so on all the time.

The cable providers lined Canoe's pockets with $150 million to make it happen. Tough task, says the Wall Street Journal, which reports that TV programmers fear targeted advertising because it might create such value for advertising clients that they end up spending less to reach only exactly those who might buy their products. If it's a fear that sounds arcane and self-damaging, well, welcome to the contrived world of television advertising, Mr. Verklin. Oh, and here's your paddle.