YouTube's proposal to offer privacy measures only to distribution partners is drawing the ire of many media companies, which consider it a negotiating tactic that places them under duress, Reuters reports.

YouTube says it plans to offer technology to help media companies identify copyrighted videos that are uploaded to the site, but only to potential licensing partners. A spokesman for Viacom said YouTube's "proposition that they will only protect copyrighted content if there's a business deal in place is unacceptable."

In its defense, YouTube says it needs to have deals in place with companies so that it can work with them to ascertain the true ownership of the content in videos that users upload to its site.

Recently, Viacom requested that YouTube pull 100,000 videos from the site, claiming the clips were copyrighted material.  It was later discovered that 60 to 70 of the videos were not copyrighted material.