Internet hacktivist group Anonymous is currently engaged in a war of words with Sony and its customers over whether or not its members actually breached the company's online security and compromised scads of personal information in the process, but that doesn't mean the collective can't also focus on other endeavors.
The divisive organization (or, perhaps more appropriately, disorganization) released a statement aimed at multimedia giant Viacom this week demanding an apology for "fraud and crimes" which served to "strip away the basic rights of the individual."
Anonymous' push against Viacom is related to the company's recent legal loss against Google and its ubiquitous online video property, YouTube.
Viacom claimed in 2007 that the popular site was willfully infringing on copyrights it owned. Noting YouTube's removal of nearly 100,000 videos at Viacom's insistence and a woeful lack of evidence that the company was dragging its feet on policing what users uploaded, U.S. District Court Judge Louis Stanton ruled in Google's favor.
Anonymous cited sources to illustrate why it believes Viacom's defeat was well-deserved: an approved request for YouTube viewers' IP information in 2008, and an accusation from a YouTube exec that Viacom was uploading its own content then crying "infringement!"
"Viacom's justification of 'creator's rights' seems only to mean making money for the sake of money," the group said. "Their hypocritical action of uploading fake videos to YouTube in order to furnish their own court case is transparent."
Anonymous made no mention of cyber payback in the statement, just three simple requests:
Anonymous demands from Viacom a public press release to admit and apologize for the fraud and crimes that they have committed. Anonymous also demands that Viacom allows everyone throughout the internet full rights to be able to express themselves. Lastly, we, the citizens of the world, demand that Viacom stops their attempts to gather personally identifying information such as IPs, which are of no relevance to them.
It's unclear if Viacom will come forward and give Anonymous the apology it's asking for - or what the group will do otherwise.
