TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Last Laugh! Teen Pretexter Gets Hundreds of YouTube Clips Removed

Last Laugh! Teen Pretexter Gets Hundreds of YouTube Clips Removed

Reuters News Wire (reuters@telecom-digest.org)
Sun, 15 Apr 2007 15:38:52 -0500

An Australian teenager had hundreds of clips removed from Internet
video-sharing site YouTube by pretending to be an employee of the
state broadcasting network, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

The 15-year-old sent a signed letter to YouTube saying he represented
ABC, the owner of the copyright to a popular local comedy series, and
asked the site to remove clips from the series that users had posted
on it, local media reported.

After being contacted by lawyers for the ABC, the boy apologized,
Australian Associated Press reported on Saturday.

"Everyone does dumb stuff when they are 15," the head of ABC
television comedy, Courtney Gibson, told ABC Radio. She said it wasn't
immediately clear why the teenager took the action he did.

"We really appreciate that he's apologized and we'll be following up
with him next week," Gibson said.

YouTube has dominated the user-generated online video market since it
was founded in February last year. It was bought by Internet search
engine Google Inc. last November for $1.65 billion.

In March media conglomerate Viacom Inc. sued Google and YouTube for
more than $1 billion over what it said was intentional copyright
infringement for allowing users to upload popular shows onto the site.

YouTube does not prevent copyrighted content from being uploaded, but
will take material down at the request of copyright owners.

Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited.

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