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15-Year-Old Scams YouTube

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the so-easy-a-kid-can-do-it dept.

SurturZ writes "A fifteen year old from Perth, Australia, posed as an employee of the Australian Broadcasting Commission, demanding that YouTube remove hundreds of video clips of 'The Chasers War on Everything.' The amusing part is that The Chaser is a comedy company well known to perpetrate exactly this sort of prank."

3 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. The ironic part to this by rollonet · · Score: 5, Informative
    The ironic part to this is that the ABC releases episodes of The Chaser for free, in video podcast form. Also when they announced the video podcast last year, they plugged BitTorrent for helping distributing the show! In fact, the first BitTorrent release of the show was released by one of the hosts... So it dosn't seem like The Chaser are against piracy, only the ABC.

    If you live in Australia and haven't seen The Chaser it's one of the funniest shows that we've got (9pm on ABC 1). If you don't live here, you can download every episode, legally at http://www.abc.net.au/tv/chaser/war/vodcast/.

  2. Re:They do? Yes -- it's public broadcasting by fizzup · · Score: 4, Informative

    The ABC is, in fact, Australia's equivalent of the BBC or CBC: a crown corporation that acts as a national and international broadcaster. There is no direct equivalent in the United States, where it would be dismissed as "state-run television".

  3. Uhhh, he didn't really "scam" them by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is one of the major faults with the DMCA. If someone claiming to be the copyright holder contacts you with a takedown notice, you don't really have any recourse but to comply. The only situation in which you don't is if you know that you own the copyright. However there's not really a way to verify if the person contacting you is legit or not, you just have to assume they are, or risk trouble.

    I've dealt with several where I work. We get the e-mail (that's how they arrive) forwarded to us. I then go and see if the computer they said actually has the files they claimed. If so, I take it down. Now in our case it's always been clear cut, things like a student's system got hacked and it is acting as an XDCC bot serving up movies, but I have no way of knowing if the complainant is actually the copyright holder or not. I have to act on the complaint anyhow.

    So it's not really a scam, it is companies doing what they must to comply with a bad law.