Looking back two years: Mark Cuban wrong about Youtube?

6 replies
When Google bought Youtube a couple years ago Mark Cuban made some predictions. Remember this one from his blog:

"The coming dramatic decline of youtube".

And its not just copyright lawsuits that will end up severely impacting Youtube's business, its that their business is too easy for the people who own the copyrights to copy.

If Daniel Powter wants to encourage everyone and anyone to put Bad Day music behind user created videos, its certainly easy for him or his label to do. Its just a question of who will pay for all the bandwidth involved. If the NBA wants lots of versions of Bad Day or any other song backing videos of their games, they would be smart to do a deal with his label and have their own little hosting section on nba.com . As would any copyright owner. Maybe TNT will offer up the ability to host user generated voice overs of Charles and Kenny. Now that is using technology for a good purpose.

Whats worse for Youtube is that there might finally be an economic model for the copyright owners to host their own videos. Advertisers are chomping at the bit to buy rich media advertising and copyright owners are chomping at the bit to provide them broadband content for their ads. (Of course we are just a year away from there being far more video available than advertisers, but thats a future blog entry)
So you can pretty well bet that every and any copyright owner is going to be jumping up and down telling Youtube to remove every bit of content with any copyrighted material. The double worse news for Youtube is that wont be easy. How are you going to tell Barry that he has to take down the video of Aunt Sally getting her groove on to Long Tall Sally, and Uncle Willie doing the Hand Jive at his Bar Mitvah ? That those are both copyrighted songs that Cousin Brucie, the DJ played, and we encouraged you to break the law when we made it so easy to post them and send links to your entire family ?
The Coming Dramatic Decline of Youtube blog maverick

Cuban thought that all copyright owners would be telling youtube to take down content but I haven't seen much of that. The only example I can think of recently was the Saturday Night Live Tina Fey shows which were on youtube and then taken down quickly after NBC asked them to. Most copyright owners aren't doing this as far as I can tell. Perhaps they have decided deing on youtube is good for their sales.

What do you think? Is it still too soon to say Cuban was wrong?

Here's an updated viewpoint by Cuban on Youtube:

http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2008/03...ries-get-legal
#back #cuban #mark #wrong #years #youtube
  • Profile picture of the author Steven Wagenheim
    I think he's dead wrong. I think this is free publicity for these people and
    they'd be crazy to make a stink about it.

    So far, since it seems few have (made a stink) it's quite possible that I'm
    right.

    But I guess time alone will tell.
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    • Profile picture of the author Aaron Moser
      Mark Cuban is an arrogant moron. I'm glad he was wrong! I'm also glad his so called "slam dunk" venture to enter HDTV was a flop too. The guy got lucky once with the sale of Broadcast.com to Yahoo for over $1 billion. Now I just wish he'd disappear!
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      • Profile picture of the author Michael Dominic
        Originally Posted by Aaron Moser View Post

        Mark Cuban is an arrogant moron. I'm glad he was wrong! I'm also glad his so called "slam dunk" venture to enter HDTV was a flop too. The guy got lucky once with the sale of Broadcast.com to Yahoo for over $1 billion. Now I just wish he'd disappear!
        You hit the nail right on the head with the "arrogant" statement. I spoke with the man once, it was not very pleasant.
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        • Profile picture of the author AndrewCavanagh
          Actually the opposite has happened.

          YouTube has allowed the copyright owners to identify content in videos they own and put a "buy now" ad below the videos...
          YouTube Blog

          Smart move from both sides.

          This doesn't mean youtube will never get sued but it sure does make it a whole lot more appealing to work with them instead of trying to sue.

          Kindest regards,
          Andrew Cavanagh
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        • Profile picture of the author johnapuna
          Originally Posted by Michael Dominic View Post

          You hit the nail right on the head with the "arrogant" statement. I spoke with the man once, it was not very pleasant.
          You spoke with Cuban face to face? is he as stupid in real life as he is on tv?
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  • Profile picture of the author ahuddy
    I wouldn't say that youtube has declined, it has definatley grown it's exposure to the world over the past two years. I have however noticed that the content is much more strictly regulated. When Rick Rolls are being removed for copyright reasons that is well just wow. The funny this is that anything that is copyright removed on youtube is always available on videos.google.com so go figure.
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  • Profile picture of the author Floyd Fisher
    Google still has several lawsuits outstanding concerning Youtube...most notably Viacom.

    Until those get settled, it's still too soon IMHO.
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