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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,'"
Here at Slashdot we don't tolerate bombastic remarks from people who feel compelled to draw attention to themselves by showcasing their opinions unsolicitedly.
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...
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...
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.
Isn't this the guy that started broadcast.com, that was later bought by Yahoo! for billions of dollars? I'd think he'd probably know a thing or two about this.........
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
it's obviously because there is no one behind YouTube worth suing. Of course this hasn't stopped the RIAA or MPAA from shutting down thousands of other sites that host copyright material.
Not quite sure why Youtube is allowed to exist, when anyone else that sets up something similar would just get shutdown. It's very strange.
Gekido's Lair
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!!!
Actually, he started Audionet, which became broadcast.com. I will never, never, never live down the fact that I interviewed with him personally, along with one of his engineers, in the spring of 1996 for a tech job here in Dallas, and I expressed disappointment that the pay was going to be meager, though there was a lot of stock being offered. My only defense is that the bubble hadn't even come to Texas yet, and nobody thought stock was worth the risk of working for a little startup. When the interview ended, he politely said he hoped I would consider them anyway. By the time I got home, I realized I'd made a blunder, and tried to call back to salvage things. I was shut out; I couldn't even get the secretary on the phone any more, or a reswponse to email. I was probably doomed when I walked in, though, because I wore a suit.
Secret fact/verification: the original Audionet building was a warehouse in the Deep Ellum area with a roof so bad I think it was rotting. There were dishes on the roof. They had a swing hanging from the rafters in one corner.
Get off my launchpad!
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.
Maybe that won't stop some jokers though.
Actually, I tend to feel that the copyright holders have an advantage that the 'jokers' are (currently) localized to a few sites. At least yourtube has a policy to remove disputed content... clone #10001 may not.
Home users are getting access to faster and faster internet lines and streaming AV is becoming as common as browsing HTML pages, it can't be too long before there are many many more 'yourtubes', some may be more reluctant to remove content based on a simple letter. If some user in one of the many countries that the US doesn't see eye to eye with, hosts some episode of 'friends' on his/her site, think a strongly worded letter would do the trick?
Something has to give.
The person that comes up with a model to get paid for generating content without requiring total control of the distribution mechanism isn't going to want for much, I can tell you!
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.
Ah, but that's just messing with the banks and the government. With YouTube it's much more serious, they're messing with the MPAA & RIAA.
Oh no... it's the future.
because they steal from the little guy, rather than the big guy.
#6495ED - cornflower blue
"Only a moron wouldn't cast his vote for Monty Burns"
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you can bet the takedown rule is going to be challenged. YT can check for porn, but cant check for copyrights ? Plus, they dont just host for others, they host for their own financial benefit. Then there will the argument that they induce people to break copyright laws by not doing the obvious. Now the DMCA doesnt say you have to do the obvious, but judges and courts usually do. Then the question of why is it that other videohosting sites have no problem preventing copyrighted materials from being uploaded ,and the question will be asked if that is what seperates Youtube from other sites and has been more than minimally responsible for their success.
Then there will be every rights owner with any derivative earnings possible that will sue to get their share. Just like they did napster.
Then of course we will have to see the "training" that will come from the MPAA and RIAA after the lawsuits expand from just warning the utes of America not only about the dangers of downloading, butnow uploading.
Think Major League Baseball is going to just sit by as highlights of every game are uploaded so people dont have to buy their various online video offerings ? They will ask them to take down everything on the site they can find. Then they will sue and ask a judge why YT cant post warnings for people not to upload baseball, as they do porn. Then a tv show like the Letterman show will do the same thing with monologues, guests whatever.
the list of people who will sue will be long.
And for the record, we sold broadast.com to Y! for 28mm shares, and the latest comscore shows Y! being the top streaming destination on the net.
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.
google aggressively removes copyrighted material as well
More data, damnit!
Well yea, so I don't see the grounds for a lawsuit against YouTube, as they remove copyrighted material as well..... if the music companies have a problem, they need to make a complaint through the official channels first before launching a lawsuit.
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
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.
The question is whether YouTube qualifies for the DMCA Safe Harbor provision.
(A) As used in subsection (a), the term "service provider" means an entity offering the transmission, routing, or providing of connections for digital online communications, between or among points specified by a user, of material of the user's choosing, without modification to the content of the material as sent or received.
I'll let you decide. There's a little bit of case law on the topic out there as well.
What?
Dear sir,
News Corporation owns MySpace.
CNET Networks owns News.com.
Have fun with your lawsuit.
Sincerely,
Me
For more information, click here.
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.
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
The politically correct word these days is "terrorist" rather than "communist."
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
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.