A 15 year old Australian boy fraudulently posing as the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) succeeded in having hundreds of video clips removed from the video-sharing website YouTube.

The segments, mostly from The Chaser’s War on Everything had been replaced by a message “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Australian Broadcasting Corporation,” when the boy gave YouTube a signed form claiming, “under penalty of perjury”, that he represented the clips’ copyright owners.

The ABC contacted YouTube after the clip was removed, and was provided with a copy of the form used to claim that a copyright infringement had been committed.

Ms Courtney Gibson, head of ABC-TV comedy said, the removal of the clips was in direct contrast to ABC’s policy on content sharing. “[ABC wishes] to get our content out there on as many platforms as possible, run by as many different operators as possible.”

“We are very much keeping our options open in terms of what kind of action we take,” Gibson, said.

The boy apologized after being contacted by lawyers for the ABC, Gibson said.

“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.

“But what was of concern to us was the fact that YouTube was sending copyright infringement notices to people who have been uploading Chaser clips to YouTube, threatening to shut down their access to YouTube if they persist. That’s what was worrying to us,” she said.

The incident happened after media conglomerate Viacom, filed a lawsuit seeking more than $1 billion from Google and YouTube for copyright infringement for allowing users to upload popular shows onto the site.

YouTube was bought by Google last November for $1.65 billion and has dominated the user-generated online video market since it was founded.

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

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Entry was posted on Sunday, April 15th, 2007 at 6:32 am under Technology, YouTube.

Read more entries by Ruben Francia.
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