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Mark Cuban: Only a ‘moron’ would buy YouTube

Mark Cuban did not contact me about saving the theater exhibition business. Clearly, he is the moron. Nevertheless, he had some worthwhile stuff to say about YouTube…

Billionaire investor and dot-com veteran Mark Cuban had harsh words Thursday for YouTube, the online site that lets people share video clips, saying only a “moron” would purchase the wildly popular start-up.

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.

Sure, YouTube hosts copyrighted material but it isn’t facilitating piracy in the same way something like Napster was. So far YouTube has been aggressive in policing its content for copyrighted material. It has also worked to strike deals with content owners of content that has seen large-scale piracy like music videos.

“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.”

Big money? There are plenty of movie studios, record labels and television networks out there with big money. I think nobody has sued yet because the MPAA has proved that lawsuits don’t stop copyright infringement.

Cuban is right that YouTube is more hype that profit potential. The site is a classic example of how traffic does not automatically translate into revenue. That being said, unlike something like Napster; YouTube has created value. Clearly there is not only a market for user-generated content but also a percieved value in YouTube as a viral marketing platform. But wait, he has something to say about that too:

In other remarks, meanwhile, the often-controversial Cuban also told advertisers that the reach of YouTube is limited, particularly when it comes to user-generated videos.

“User-generated content is not going away,” he said. “But do you want your advertising dollars spent on a video of Aunt Jenny watching her niece tap dance?”

“Somebody puts up something really good and you get, what, 60,000 viewers?” Cuban added during the event at Advertising Week in New York.

60,000 viewers?!?! Hell yes if that means its 60,000 of the right viewers. If of those people 10 are the assistants of studio execs or 2000 hadn’t read Glitterfish.com but would read it daily if they knew it existed.

But I’m a little fish and Cuban is talking to the big fish. The kind of fish who can sink YouTube. What good is YouTube for them? I don’t have a complete answer for that. All I know is that YouTube is a magical place that incubates talent, offers a tremendous amount of free publicity, and is eager to work with copyright holders.

Link round up:

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 30th, 2006 at 11:16 pm and is filed under web video, industry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Mark Cuban: Only a ‘moron’ would buy YouTube”

glitterfish.com » Wall Street Journal: Google in talks to buy Youtube, Arstechnica calls Bullshit Says:
October 6th, 2006 at 9:30 pm
[…] Right on the heels of Mark Cuban’s comments that only a fool would buy Youtube, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google is in talks to buy the video portal: A purchase of YouTube could give a big boost to the online video efforts of Google. YouTube commanded 46% of visits to U.S. online video sites in August, according to market research firm Hitwise. That compared to a 23% share for the video activities of News Corp.’s MySpace social-networking site, and 10% for Google Video. […]
glitterfish.com » Arizona Daily Star: Tucson filmmaking scene Says:
October 16th, 2006 at 9:44 pm
[…] I’ve said it before, Youtube is a place for Hollywood to incubate talent, no doubt Dr. Bruckheimer has got these guys on his radar. […]

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Mark Cuban: Only a ‘moron’ would buy YouTube

2 Responses to “Mark Cuban: Only a ‘moron’ would buy YouTube”

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