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Only a 'Moron' Would Buy YouTube
ColinPL writes to mention a News.com article about some harsh words from Mark Cuban, on the possible purchase of video-sharing site YouTube. According to Mr. Cuban only a 'moron' would buy the site, because of the obvious possibility of lawsuits over intellectual property. From the article: "Cuban, co-founder of HDNet and owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, also said YouTube would eventually be 'sued into oblivion' because of copyright violations. 'They are just breaking the law,' Cuban told a group of advertisers in New York. 'The only reason it hasn't been sued yet is because there is nobody with big money to sue ... There is a reason they haven't yet gone public, they haven't sold. It's because they are going to be toasted,'"
He sounds like a communist.
Here at Slashdot we don't tolerate bombastic remarks from people who feel compelled to draw attention to themselves by showcasing their opinions unsolicitedly.
The problem is that they are supposed to be protected because they take down videos when they get a take-down notice. They also have a system that tries to prevent similar files from being re-uploaded.
Maybe that won't stop some jokers though.
Not to mention the fact that their business model seems to lack a revenue stream.
So, Mr. Murdoch, here's another web site for you to buy.
cabg x3 is a life changing event...
Funny... I thought that only a moron would buy Youtube because they can't possibly be making money by paying for gobs of bandwidth and hardware and taking in pennies at a time from Google ads. But hey...
1. Come up with an idea.
2. Find stupid VC's
3. ????
4. Profit!
We won't even get to enjoy this as long as Napster...
There is simply too much glass..
Wow. Disclaimer on my old BBS: If you point out any illegal files on this BBS, please point them out and we'll take them down. Feds didn't like that too much, on the other boards that got nailed... sigh...
I use to sound like that in high school when somebody totally whooped my ass in a competition I felt was important.
Take down all the copyrighted stuff, hire a bunch of lawyers, relax. Sounds easy enough to me. Perhaps I am a moron.
If you want to really succeed, you have to take risks.
Anyone suing U-Tube would be taking the risk of losing the lawsuit and setting a precident.
I posted a comment in Hollywood and piracy about the use of technology. . YouTube and their likes are another example of generating interest in movies. Why can't Hollywood and the entertainment industry embrace rather than fight them? http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6651916009 965516351&q=bronson+death+wish+body+count
On the one hand, he's probably right.
On the other, you've got examples like paypal.com - they've basically been enronning their ways around banking laws for years and no one has sued them to oblivion for not having a license, stealing money, etc.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
It'll be the same morons who bought shares in a web concept on back of a laundry list that went through the roof during the roaring 90's and crashed with the rest of them at the turn of the century. Fool's gold never goes out of style.
Let's see...Fox owns Myspace, so another media conglomerate (say, Universal or whoever) could buy YouTube, or a group of them can get together and share it. Then, each company enters into a reciprocation agreement with the other, agreeing not to sue each other when users post videos that are in violation of copyright. Hell, if that isn't the YouTube founders' exit strategy, then it should be (and I'll take my consulting fee now, please).
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Am I the only one crazy enough to think someone with that kind of money could just buy YouTube, move it to sweden next door to ThePirateBay and throw some more ads on it?
Marky Mark Killed Jason Bourne!
What makes you think Murdoch wants YouTube to be profitable?
It just has to be a lesser expense than any other advertising outlet.
One of the reasons networks spend big money on sports leagues is to get people to see their ads for their other programming during the games.
paintball
The only people I can see who would really be interested in this would be someone like ClearChannel.
Low quality public access broadcasting with the already prepared royalty payment scheme (radios pay per play).
Let people upload whatever they want, if its putting views and people notice its a violation it just gets handled (for 99% of the cases)
liqbase
Who says that they have to get sued? They can always devise a method of allowing copyright-holders to easily remove infringing content. Even though many of the things that I look at on YouTube are copyrighted, a good portion of them are not. As much as I would like YouTube to stay as it is, I would rather see it crippled than dead. Plus, as a business, wouldn't it be good policy to NOT get sued?
Nevermind learning and devising a new business model.
Let's see. News Corporation is a publicly traded company. News Corporation owns MySpace. Rupert Murdoch says one of MySpace's goals isto take the market lead in online video from privately held YouTube in the next 60 to 70 days. Granted, I'm not a Murdoch fan, and I'm not going to contend that he's not a "moron", but do you really think News Corp. would push this if they thought they were going to get the pants sued off of them?
"Somebody puts up something really good and you get, what, 60,000 viewers?" Cuban added during the event at Advertising Week in New York.
Well, according to this the all time high is 33 million views, with dozens of others in the one to ten million range. I know these aren't all unique viewers, and I'm not an advertising expert, but that sounds like a lot of people to me.
Cuban cautioned advertisers against investing heavily in so-called viral campaigns that are spread by users beyond their initial point of distribution on YouTube or other video-sharing sites. But he touted opportunities to run commercials on high-definition television such as his HDNet network.
So he's basically bad-mouthing Youtube in order to promote his own network. To paraphrase Cuban himself, only a moron would believe everything this guy says.
If I may ask. Perhaps a wealthy /.er (not a contradiction, you smart alecks) will chip in.
The Benefactor
If Microsoft did actually make a bid for YouTube, the world's largest repository of bullshit, they probably would be morons.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Remember when some "moron" payed $5.7 billion for broadcast.com? Never heard of it?? Hehe...QED. (Neither broadcast.com nor broadcast.yahoo.com exist as distinct web addresses today).
Give me a break, shut up for once, you lucky fool.
Against US interests, anyway, YouTube is protected by the DMCA's takedown notice procedure. As long as they continue to comply with DMCA takedown requests, they don't have any more to worry about than any ISP that provides web space to its users.
"Only a moron wouldn't cast his vote for Monty Burns"
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Commercials.
As soon as YouTube places commercials in front of their vids, even if they cookie them to just 1 per hour per viewer, the money will be flooding in.
Here's why: YouTube's content review and tagging system for searches, plus their popularity and "stars" rating systems are perfect metadata for targeted ads. Not "somewhat fuzzily targeted" based on collected trends but directly. That car. That skateboard. THAT song. Learn THAT trick. Go to THAT place. All for sale "HERE".
People won't stand for too many, but tuned right the loss of viewers from annoyance versus the revenue from commercials' simple brainwashing techniques (think of commercials as competing social memes) will balance.
The DMCA actually has one bright spot. It defines a take-down procedure for copyright holders to use. YouTube complies with such takedown requests as they get them (I have actually sent a few of them, so I know), which means that they are not liable to claims of infringement or contributory infringement.
Because he got the morons at Yahoo! to buy broadcast.com/Audionet which is no longer around.
That's not to say that Cuban is a moron, quite the contrary.
Copyright lawsuits are no worry to youtube. Why you may ask? simple, the first step in a lawsuit is to send "cease and desist" letter, asking for them to stop, youtube simply removes the video and appoligises for the infringement.
Youtube's video subbiting agreement specifies that the user should not submit material that the subbmitter is not the owner of. So even if the person seeking a fee for use from youtube, they simply fax over a copy of the agreement the subbmitter agreed to and sends the party sueing there address and email address telling that lawyer this is the guilty party and 99.9% of the time the lawyer moves on to the guilty party or more likely the lawsuit is thrown into the trashcan seeing the guity party is not able to pay for the even the costs allready acrued much less a real judgement.
Even if it made it before a judge, it would be thrown out because youtube behaved approiately within the law youtube did not request illegal content to be submitted, and removed the inapropiate content as soon as they were notified. Given that youtube now has enough funds to hire an entire stable of copyright infridgement lawyers that drag any lawsuit out to eternity making any reward to be gained from the lawsuit to be swallowed up by court costs. Just how much is the use of a copyrighted material for a few weeks quickly removed upon request of the injured party.
Ed T. Rush, NBA manager of officials, announced plans to buy YouTube along with a group of referees and sports writers, including Jim Gray, Sam Smith, and Chad Ford.
Is this his way of stating his intention to bid?
On one hand, you probably lost out on a lot of money, on the other hand, you can know that that you didn't profit from a scam.
Broadcast.com was just that, a scam. I remember the Cuban road-show where he and Mary Meeker (who was an equity advisor at Morgan Stanley) both tried to pitch the sale of Broadcast.com. Not only was the presentation full of exaggerations and outright lies, Marky Meeker was grossly breaking the law and directly working for Morgan's IBanking side as an equity analyst (Equity analysts are supposed to have a "chinese-wall" in place where they can't work on IBanking relationships).
Cuban is rich, and you (probably) aren't. Cuban made his money as a despicable liar, side by side with a professional con-artist -- you have a chance to do otherwise and don't have to live down their deceitfulness.
Contrary to popular opinion, bags of money aren't so wonderful if you have trouble sleeping at night.
Dear sir,
News Corporation owns MySpace.
CNET Networks owns News.com.
Have fun with your lawsuit.
Sincerely,
Me
For more information, click here.
Do I get a cookie?
Soooo. They let stolen content onto their site and add commercials from sponsors. Probably like the sponsors that first paid to have this content on TV. They can now pay again to have the same content played on youtube. Wonderful.
Choosing to not gamble requires no defense.
he may have been promoting his own crap hd network but he still has a good point. YouTube will never make it as a for-profit company. for the guy who said the all time record is 33 million hits - you are right, they weren't unique - and in addition i guarantee it was for a movie that was copyrighted material.. YouTube is only good for stuff thats copyrighted - the rest of the crap on there is some jackass in a pink tutu singing along to retarded techno german music he filmed with his webcam. once the powers that be crackdown on the copyrighted material there will be nothing of value left on YouTube. the whole 'take down the stuff when they are notified' is also a load of crap, that won't last very long - that is, if their revenue stream ever picks up. you've gotta follow the money - and at the moment, there is none to follow.. thus no one has sued yet cause no one is benefitting from this crap. once someone starts to benefit from this stuff, there will be lawsuits left and right.
"i stand on the edge of destruction" -shai hulud
This is so backwards. I don't really understand the thought process.
Suing Napster, YouTube, insert widly popular item here is like suing the car after it gets you in a car accident.
Vulture capitalists make money by stock multiplications through N series of investment rounds. All have an exit strategy that includes selling the stock that's been multiplied N number of times via Y number of rounds to someone else, either the public or a well-healed company via stock, cash, and maybe warrants or debt sale.
You don't need this. At your stage, you're in what's called your cash cow era, or, sometimes known as the oil-well-in-the-basement phase. This means that you're actually making nice money steadily, but are probably in comparative growth stagnation. You'll need either higher profits (e.g. more to spend or dividend-out), start new products or add product lines, buy somebody to augment the aforementioned, or find a nice graceful exit strategy because YOUR COMPANY IS FINANCIALLY BORING. Sorry to shout, but VCs aren't interested in your measly growth. They want big return, and they want to syndicate the risk out as far as is possible.
Yes, you've done the right thing. Yes, you can continue to pump oil in your basement by doing the right things. If you're interested in taking considerable risk for considerable growth, the VCs will hunt you down like a dog.
Whining, however, will get you nowhere.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
While we're at it, PLEASE do everything in your power to keep the content of YouTube OFF of HDNet.
I know what you're thinking. Did I forward 65,535 packets or 65,536 packets?
Microsoft launches its own video site, and a week later we read scare stories about how YouTube is doomed.
The only reason it hasn't been sued yet is because there is nobody with big money to sue
Does it mean that the less money you got in that kind of business the higher above the law you are?
You just got troll'd!
Didn't Mark Cuban get rich by stealing other peoples content and putting it online. How far he has come from his humble beginings.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast.com
Commercials eh?
One of the things I like about YouTube is the "dude did you see x" factor. You can usually find something you saw on TV or pretty much anywhere on the 'net on YouTube to show to friends/coworkers.
You know he's right though, without any way to reimburse the content creators, YouTube's users simply break copyright law every time they post non-original content for all to see. Perhaps TV and movie studios could provide a pool of short ads, and when a video is submitted with copyrighted material from that source, the user would select them and a random or chosen ad would play before or after the video from one of the network's sponsors (after, please?).
Because it worked so well for iFilm.
Huge volume sales, no drm, and *extremely cheap*. Cheap as in you are selling bandwith at retail, that's it, that's what tecnology and digital content means in the long run, you are selling 1s and 0s, you buy wholesale, sell retail, that's it, at a slight markup, and make it on VOLUME.... 50/50 split of the net with the content creator. Scrupulously honest with the customer's money, you never, ever screw the talent like, and try to always have the best airtight online security imaginable when dealing with cash.
You'll make money with that model, movies or music.
You are happy, working, providing neat products. Your employees are happy, customers satisifed? Well, sounds OK to me.
Look at this dudes idea about selling out. Sometimes it is better to just do what you are doing at the level you are doing it at and be happy! Companies that get that "must keep growing faster and faster or we fail it!" are not the ultimate. They are just one type of business mindset, no law says you have to emulate them.
... would listen to Mark Cuban's fratboy rants.
Perhaps YouTube could match commercials to videos: only four-star commercials (heh heh) can appear with four-star videos. Want your ad to work? Make it a good ad.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Just type "greater fool investment" into Google and study the results...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
First, the provisions of the DMCA apply to ISPs primarily, and not necessarily to YouTube.
Second, there are still fairly strict requirements they've got to live up to be rendered non-liable. In general, the less they know, and the less they do with the data (that is, non-automated stuff), the safer you are. Plus you must prove you've acted strongly against infringement.
YouTube may well be unable to convince a court of this. Everyone knows there's a vast amount of infringing stuff on there. And they've certainly got a lot more involvement directly with the content than someone merely providing an HTTP-accessible directory.
I think YouTube has every reason to worry, given the lawyers the other side has.
dude, I'll buy it for like a buck, maybe. Do you think they'll take an IOU? Oh, oh, and what is their return policy.
Business / Internet video
The trouble with YouTube
Aug 31st 2006 | SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist print edition
It attracts a lot of viewers, but can “user-generated” video make money?
“STARBUCKS has comfy chairs, but they don’t charge people for sitting in them,” says Tom McInerney, the boss and co-founder of Guba, an internet-video company. Instead, he explains, Starbucks provides a comfortable environment, at considerable expense, so that people will buy overpriced coffee. That, in essence, is the business model being pursued by websites that host “user-generated content” such as personal blogs, photographs and today’s craze, amateur videos, which can be uploaded and watched on sites such as YouTube, Google Video, MySpace, Guba, Veoh and Metacafe. By offering a setting for free interaction, such sites provide the online equivalent of comfy chairs. The trouble is that, so far, there is no equivalent of the overpriced coffee that brings in the money and pays the bills.
IMAGE: Head and shoulders above the rest, for now (AP)
That is why people like Chad Hurley and Steven Chen (pictured), the co-founders of YouTube, the clear leader of the pack by audience size, are casting around for a business model. Aware that inserting advertisements at the beginning of video clips, as some sites do, is annoying and risks driving away YouTube’s users, Mr Hurley and Mr Chen have announced two experiments with advertising, with the promise of more to come. One idea is for “brand channels” in which corporate customers create pages for their own promotional clips. Warner Brothers Records, a music label, led the way, setting up a page to promote a new album by Paris Hilton. The second experiment is “participatory video ads”, whereby advertisements can be uploaded and then rated, shared and tagged just like amateur clips. This “encourages engagement and participation,” the company declares.
Even as advertisers evaluate these new ideas, however, YouTube and the other video-sharing sites face other difficulties. For one thing, they are in a no-man’s land of copyright law: they promise to pull pirated content from their sites when asked to do so, but it is only a matter of time before one of them is hit with a big lawsuit. Then there are the costs of running such a site—video requires a lot of bandwidth and storage. A rival estimates that YouTube is losing more than $500,000 a month.
Putting paid-for advertisements alongside amateur video clips, perhaps based on keywords or tags, poses another problem. “How do you know the guy in a video doesn’t make a racial slur?” asks Mr McInerney. Many firms will be cautious about letting an automatic system—such as, say, Google’s AdSense—place their ads next to user-generated clips of unknown provenance and with potentially embarrassing contents. (Even so, Guba is testing AdSense for Video, which has not yet been officially launched.)
For its part, Guba is betting on a combination of advertising plus the sale and rental of commercial video material. Its site offers both free amateur videos and paid-for content, including films from Sony and Warner Brothers. When Guba cut its prices last week, allowing new films to be downloaded for $9.99 and older ones for $4.99, its sales jumped tenfold. Google Video also allows content owners to charge for video. This suggests that internet-video sites are on a collision course with DVD-rental outfits, such as Netflix, which are moving towards the delivery of films via the
Only a moron would take advice from a moron about morons.
Why do people keep talking about ads on YouTube? YouTube is already going *way* too far with the few ads they've got. If they start making any real money from ads they will be sued for every penny they have forgotten in their pants.
To place ads they would need to remove all copyrighted material which should strip them of about 80% of their visitors.
Improve at backgammon rapidly through addictive quickfire position quizzes: www.bgtrain.com
Well that pricked the ears of the investors at Fox no doubt. Instead of a 'remove this copyrighted material' link, shouldn't it be 'buy this video now'? It's free advertising at a terrible resolution with a link to purchase, that's a gold mine surely?
It would seem like as soon as they start injecting ads into the video they're going to lose protection.
Better idea: release commercials as regular videos, and let your users rank and tag them as usual. Put some on the front page as featured content, etc. This will do 2 things: 1) Your users automatically "target" their own advertising. 2) The company who placed advertising can track how well the ad did, then refocus future ads to their audience. YouTube could offer more detailed statistics for "advertising" accounts.
In order to sue someone for copyright infringement you MOST send a sestet & easiest letter. But if the website( YouTube) removes the content complained about in the sestet & easiest letter, then the person who sent it( the copyright holder) can't sue them.
YouTube obeys all sestet & easiest letter their for they will never be sued for copyright infringement.
So i guess that makes News.com the "Morons". A big site like that should know how copyright work but clearly they don't or they wood'ent have made that story.
I check out a newsletter from Bob Lefsetz related to music and usually I'm not interested in what's posted on non-music from his newsletter but seeing his comments (posted below) after reading Slashdot's article is a useful combo:
Mark Cuban is a crybaby.
Selling Broadcast.com at the height of dot com frenzy, he wants to shut the door behind him, exclude all those who don't play by the rules. He wants to see the death of YouTube, since they're stealing the content and he's investing money to gain a foothold in the movie/visual content business.
Yes, that's how quickly the young become old farts. How Democrats turn into Republicans. How hippies become racists, wanting to keep the disadvantaged away from their McMansions, now being built behind gates.
Society is made up of rules, they call them laws, but laws are made to be broken. Or maybe you never cottoned to rock music. Or came to the party so late that a rock star was someone who was famous, as opposed to someone who played by his own rules.
Compare Mr. Cuban to John Lennon. Lennon made all that money and fought for the people, not himself. He was always true to himself. Which is why he's still remembered a quarter century after his death, and Mr. Cuban will be forgotten minutes after his demise.
Go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eD6VyQijMk. And get ready for BEATLEMANIA!
What is the point of your post? Who cares if CNET owns News.com? What bearing on the possibility/likelihood of a lawsuit against those who have published/made defamatory remarks does your statement have? Does being owned by CNET up the chain make one immune to lawsuits? Does having lots of money and a big mouth make one immune to lawsuits?
I responded to the statement that "News.com is the proud owner of Myspace.com - Competition with youtube with their new video streaming network."
News.com does not own MySpace.com. The poster to whom I was replying confused News.com, a property of CNET Networks, with News Corporation, the parent of MySpace.
If you want to know about blah blah make one immune to lawsuits blah blah having lots of money and a big mouth make one immune to lawsuits, ask a lawyer, not some dude on Slashdot.
For more information, click here.
Who wouldn't want to buy YouTube and get the chance to monetize the hosting of content like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx-NLPH8JeM
Despite Mr. Cuban's legal-business opinion - which, sadly may hold SOME water, yourtube is cool because it is content_UNIQUE, and gives another creative expression for artists, hackers, et. al.
;-)
Below is, among other things, fairly cool youtube, probably for home viewing ONLY vs. work, unless you REALLY want to get escorted out the door at work!!
1. Farmir - Numb
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHkGnfiLiGo&NR
There is more/similar in the various links. Since once would guess that many/most slashdot readers have seen LOTR at least once, or perhaps even READ the originals (TFOTR, TTT, ROTK, H, S, etc.) they will hopefully get the song (new) and the (video) editing combine with a frission that inspires. (Faramir's relationship with his father, Denethor II, viz. his father's relationship with his brother, Boromir)
This is particularly cool because of some of the editing in the video part, as well as publishing a cool track that was specifically written for the video (?). Enabling creativity vs. stiffling legal restraints...
THIS is an example of the promise of youtube, assumming we can keep the jackass IP lawyers at bay - or at least come to some sort of arrangement. One of my bigger rants is how broke - broke - broken the PTO is, and the current laws are with respect to modern technology... WAY overdue for a revamp - revisit - but NOT the way the IP guys MPAA - RIAA et. al. want to... More Creative Commons or some other Stallmanesque or Lessig-like arrangement.
Of course, you would do well to remember that this opinion is from someone who spent xx yrs in the Marine Corps (with x combat tours), and gave the gentlemen of his wedding party (replica) 1865 cavalry sabers with sheaths and belts for wedding gifts...
I also rant frequently about leadership failures (personal, corporate, governance, etc.) too...
my 2c...