Australian Teen Fools YouTube With Fake 'Takedown' Letter

SYDNEY – 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, the Australian Associated Press reported on Saturday.

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"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. (GOOG) last November for $1.65 billion.

In March media conglomerate Viacom Inc. (VIA) 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.