That behemoth, of course, is Viacom. Viacom took its gloves off in a digital-age boxing match that could go many more than 12 rounds as two technology champions duke it out on principle. In a statement it released in conjunction with filing its $1 billion federal copyright lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Viacom called YouTube a "significant, for-profit organization that has built a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others' creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent Google."

Whether those "fans" to which Viacom referred mind Google making money from the traffic they drive to the video-sharing site is not the issue. Whether the fans are liable in future copyright suits is. According to some legal experts, YouTube's uploading community could find itself in the line of fire.

Remember the RIAA?

Just last year, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) targeted YouTube -- and its users. Many YouTube users received cease-and-desist orders from the RIAA. At issue, once again, was the alleged illegal posting of copyrighted material.

At that time, some legal experts discussed the possibility of an RIAA v. YouTube battle. Instead, the world is watching a Viacom v. YouTube battle unfold, but many industry watchers believe it could mark the beginning of a copyright-owner onslaught from all sides. The RIAA could decide to strike while the iron is hot and rekindle the coals of the fire it started last year. The RIAA could not immediately be reached for comment for this report.

What is certain is that the cease-and-desist letters were a demonstration of how emerging and increasingly popular digital technologies are putting a strain on copyright holders' ability to control the use of their works in a digital age, according to Eric W. Bass, intellectual property litigator with Farella Braun & Martel in San Francisco.

However, he added, "Unlike the RIAA's pursuit of peer-to-peer, fire-sharing services, in which the uploading of musical content is sometimes centralized enough that pursuit of the high-traffic offenders is a plausible enforcement strategy, there may be no centralized source of these videos for the RIAA to pursue." (continued...)

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