Apple co-founder joins legal fight against YouTube

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is joining a legal fight taking aim at the flimsy controls on Google's YouTube video site that have turned him into a unwilling pawn in a scam that has stolen millions of dollars from people around the world.Wozniak vented his frustration and with Google in a video conference held Thursday to explain why the personal computer pioneer decided to file a lawsuit against one of the world's biggest internet companies in a California state court earlier this week.

The 47-page complaint revolves around a ruse that has plugged the images of Wozniak and high-tech celebrities such as Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Tesla CEO Elon Musk into video clips trying to entice viewers to send bitcoins, a digital currency, with the promise of getting twice the amount in return.

It's similar to a scam that cropped up on Twitter last week after hackers hijacked the accounts of more than 100 prominent people, including Gates, Musk, former US President Barack Obama and Joe Biden, this year's Democratic Party nominee for president. Twitter was able to regain control of the hacked accounts and purge the scam from its messaging service within a few hours.

Wozniak, though, said he has been trying to get Google and YouTube to prevent videos peddling the scam with his name and picture in it since May 10, but can't seem to stop the blatant ruse from repeatedly reappearing on the site because he still hasn't been able to reach a human.

(Image Credit: AP)