For reasons only he knows, Mark Cuban is obsessed with dumping on the idea that YouTube might be worth billions of dollars. He publicly labeled any serious prospective buyer of the site a “moron,” but then along came word that Google, founded by two certified geniuses, is interested in paying $1.6 billion for the video sharing supernova.
Now, in a somewhat jumbled follow-up, Cuban reiterates his view.
Would Google be crazy to buy Youtube. No doubt about it. Moronic would be an understatement of a lifetime.
Cuban’s main argument: YouTube is built on a mountain of sand because copyright owners are about to rear up and bury the business with costly infringement litigation. The threat of being crushed by endless lawsuits only escalates once the start-up becomes a deep-pocketed player or is purchased by one. Google, for instance.
His warnings today include a new twist on this theme. Cuban says that the big media companies aren’t the worst threat to YouTube…it’s the little guys who will sue up the wazoo. In particular, Cuban seems to fear the rise of leech-like law firms that will try to scam the federal court system by writing dummy copyrighted songs, have someone post them to YouTube and then turn around and sue YouTube for infringement of their own copyrighted work.
Dont think for a minute that there wont be lawyers writing songs, having their buddies perform them, and putting them on Youtube, jerry rigging the number of views via any number of easy to do processes and then suing Youtube over it.. It will be the Youtube version of shareholder lawsuits. They wont need no stinkin take down notices. They will claim that Youtube isnt a hosting company, they are a media company with licensing deals, getting paid for advertising around video. Just like every other media company
I can’t imagine a federal judge allowing these “jerry rigged,” i.e. fraudulent, lawsuits to get very far and in any event, the dubious plaintiff could be liable for damages and attorneys fees if he or she lost the copyright claim. That’s a huge disincentive for someone to fake a copyright violation in order to file suit against YouTube.
In short, Cuban’s argument is crazy. But, amid all his jumbled verbiage there is a kernel of truth. YouTube is relying on the DMCA’s take-down notice provisions to defend itself against copyright lawsuits. When the copyright owner is required to police 60,000 uploads per day, the take-down notice is nothing short of a sham because it’s not practical for anybody, much less a small rights holder, to scan this much material…and that’s only YouTube. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of video sharing sites out there.
So, there are bound to be legitimate lawsuits that turn the DMCA upside down and change the rules of the game, not only for YouTube but for the entire Internet. That’s going to happen whether or not Google or Yahoo or Viacom buys YouTube simply because the copyright laws can’t keep pace with technology and new ground rules are needed.
And maybe Cuban is like “the weird sisters” in Shakepeare’s Macbeth. These three “witches” spooked the Scottish king with their gibberish (“fair is foul and foul is fair”) but they were really foretelling the future for the monarch. Cuban is crying foul over the prospective sale of YouTube, but he’s really predicting an imminent change in how the copyright laws handle this new world of Internet video and user-generated content.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:53 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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