Only a 'Moron' Would Buy YouTube 178
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,'"
Reminds me of the 0-day sites... (Score:3, Interesting)
Advertise movies. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Mr. Cuban (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Um, No. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Mr. Cuban (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Safe Harbor? (Score:3, Interesting)
(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.
Re:Not to mention... (Score:1, Interesting)
You're nice guys, and don't want VCs (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:risk taking (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyone suing U-Tube would be taking the risk of losing the lawsuit and setting a precident.
Elsewhere [slashdot.org] on /. I pontificated that YouTube was going to get taken down. While YouTube may still get slammed, I'm starting to rethink my position, especially with regard to how things turned out for Napster.
That is, the RIAA took a fairly big risk going after Napster because the music industry truly believed Napster to threaten their bottom line. Without getting into nitty gritties, many people today believe that the RIAA overestimated the damage that illegal music downloads have on sales. In fact, some experts believe music downloads do not significantly effect music sales while contributing to societal good [unc.edu] and others assert that filesharing actually spurs music sales [com.com].
Given that lesson, it could be that the video industry (and even an overextended and hyper-litigious music industry) is thinking to itself that stopping YouTube is not in their best interests. Not only would the lawsuit be expensive, but it would dampen the enthusiasm people are clearly expressing regarding downloadable video (and I don't mean BitTorrrent).
Now, I'm the last person to believe that the suits have actually learned from their mistakes (*cough* Jack Valenti *cough*)* but it is entirely possible that the industry might have other plans for YouTube including taking a "wait and see" attitude. Then again, they could simply be spellchecking the suit before submitting it.
* Yes, I know Valenti is no longer the head of the MPAA