Notoriety cost him five bills. It’s his money. Depending on what he does with it, it might even have been worth it.
Yep, it’s his property and he can do whatever he wants with it. And it is interesting that for $500 he has over a million youtube hits. So we can now see that 15 minutes of fame is pretty cheap to buy nowadays.
After a Youtube video becomes popular, they give you the opportunity to put ads on it and monetize your work. If this kid did that, he may well have made much more than $500 back.