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15-Year-Old Scams YouTube
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."
YHBT (Youtube has been trolled)
As copyright holder I DEMAND Slashdot remove all first posts from all stories now and in the future.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=230785&cid=187 29299
The teenager has since apologised.
My thoughts on this: Google simply took down the videos and sent out copyright infringement notices to the users who had put them up, without contacting the ABC to verify the claim. This kid claimed to be representing the ABC, so obviously if Google had contacted him to confirm the claim, they still would have problems, which is why they should have contact the ABC directly.
The copyright is owned by the ABC (or the Chaser crew), but they give permission to use it anywhere and everywhere.
I wank in the shower.
I'm not usually one to find 'disruptive' pranks funny, but this doesn't seem too far off the kind of things do they on the show (which I've not seen). If companies will put out shows that do just these kind of stunts, and aimed at the teenage/early 20's demographic it's of course no surprise.
This seems largely harmless in the end, and ABC seem to be taking it in good faith (recognising the irony, I assume). I'm happy that it brings attention to how worth while it is to have a system where you make some attempt to verify the authenticity of a claim of ownership when a takedown is issued.
I know with the DMCA you are supposed to take down content when a complaint is made - and not dick around establishing ownership (and you should then put it back up if the origional party claims it's legitimate - and then it's up the two parties to fight it out in court), but are you at least allowed to verify the request was sent by the party that claims to have sent it? If not, it seems like a significant oversight in the process.
If the people who drafted this legislation had any idea about the technology they were dealing with, they could at least have mandated requests be digitally signed with the public key of the content holder (with a certificate that is backed by one of a number of trusted authorities).
From TFA: "Everyone does dumb stuff when they are fifteen," Ms Gibson told ABC Radio.
Personally I think this is great, not dumb. It's a far cry from the typical prank done by a 15 year old and really shows some ingenuity and humour...
If I were in the position to give the kid a job, I would.
Brilliant, I look forward to the next Chaser episode - I expect they're going to sing his praises for such a cool stunt... and I'll upload it to YouTube for you too :-)
You mean they lie about whether they're authorised to act on behalf of copyright holders _under penalty of perjury_?
In any case, I think the interesting part is this:
butter the donkey
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/.
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".
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.
That's simply because the commercial television media here doesn't have much as of a budget for news and tends to take everything in the press releases on trust.
The head of the comedy department didn't fly off the handle saying we're suing the kid. The police didn't show up at his door to take them away in hand cuffs. There response was "Everyone does dumb stuff when they're 15." What happened to that attitude in America?
- Joe
To say he scammed them seems a bit harsh. He didn't do this for any personal gain, which is implied when you call it a scam. It was silly and he shouldn't have done it, but it wasn't as serious as a scam. No harm done, except maybe a little time lost and some advertisment money. On the other hand, Youtube has learned a lesson.