If we needed any further proof that truth is stranger than fiction, we could find it in the recent story that an Australian teen has fake "policed" YouTube clips using the DMCA.:

A PERTH teenager has apologised to the ABC for pretending to represent the national broadcaster in demanding the removal of hundreds of video clips from the YouTube website.

The 15-year-old boy sent YouTube a signed form saying he represented the copyright owner, ABC Television, and that he wanted the footage, mostly from The Chaser's War on Everything, removed from the website.

When critics of the DMCA warned that the provisions for copyright takedown would allow any copyright holder, such as the writer of an email (copyrighted from its writing) to subpoena identities and demand takedowns, these fears were dismissed as absurd speculation. Even the wildest speculations don't live up to the ease with which a juvenile prankster could remove hundreds of clips a copyright holder had authorized.

It's a basic principle of security engineering that when you design a mechanism for use, you must anticipate how it might be abused. The more powerful the use, the more dangerous the abuse. Lawmakers don't always think that way, particularly not when they're just taking the packaged compromise offered by the "copyright interests."

So it's no surprise that a mechanism for rapid takedown of alleged infringements can be used for rapid takedown of non-infringing content as well (content posted with consent of the copyright holder is not infringing, one of the issues that bedevils automated filters). The weak safeguards of 512(f) and even the "penalty of perjury" for misstatements about authorization to file the complaint didn't deter the teen's false copyright claims nor -- more importantly -- keep the material online where ABC wanted it.