Mark Cuban Declares War on GooTube 295
PreacherTom writes "Mark Cuban — the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, tech entrepreneur, and self-proclaimed 'blog maverick' — has always been outspoken in his ridicule of Google and YouTube. Now, it appears he's willing to put his money where his mouth is. Cuban is so convinced that GooTube will be a failure that he is in the process of acquiring the news agency owned by Robert Tur, currently involved in serious litigation with Google over copyright violations. With billions on both sides, this could be a real clash of the titans."
Titans (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, it could be, but we're calling it "GooTube".
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Re:Titans (Score:5, Funny)
One sounds like a glue, the other a brand of European yogurt.
Re:Titans (Score:4, Funny)
And on another note, why does it matter how rich these people are? Yeah, I know. It was a rethoric question. The real quiestion is; why the hell do we take this situation without the least bit of critiquie?
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Should have gone into marketing.
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Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Dallas Mavericks
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Re:Wait... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, this is actually his area of business specialty (media and the internet.) He has a ton of business reasons to ensure Google/YouTube don't succeed. He probably had the same idea 3 or 4 years ago but scrapped it over liability concerns, and he's making sure nobody else gets to make money off it either.
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And, I believe, donates an equal amount to charity. I think he was even quoted as saying something along the lines of "Such and such charity hasn't been getting enough money from me since I lost my voice, so I've been catching up on badmouthing the refs"...
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Ah, american capitalism. Come up with an idea, find weaknesses in it, then wait until someone else uses the idea and then sue their asses off.
This guy is pure slime.
The guy is ALL hobbies (Score:5, Interesting)
When I met him very briefly (like 1 second) at CES some years back, watching him speak was amazing, not for what he said, but to hear the AWE from the representatives of companies like TI that were talking about how nobody did more for their industry than him.
The man has loads of money, and is spending it to push things that he believes will make the world a better place. He also has an ego the size of Texas. He had is own show on HD Net (where he could be a big dork but have his players on), and HD Net's coverage of CES was interviewing him.
The guy made a fortune selling broadcast.com at JUST the right time, and is now pushing technology the way he wants it, where a few gambles can make a difference. HD Net's sports coverage forced ESPN to adopt HD content before they wanted to, and DirecTV used HD Net to anchor HD programming when there was almost no programming. If it wasn't for him, the local affiliates would have gotten their dream of HD being a fig leaf to get public airwaves, where 1/6 of the channel space would carry normal 480i programming, and 5/6s be sold for data services, etc. Instead, HD Net helped force everyone's hand, and HD is here and real.
The guy's hobby appears to be bending public will to his, and he does a good job of it. While these "investments" may not have been profitable in a traditional sense (I doubt that he loses money, but he probably isn't getting a better ROI than having plowed his money into the S&P 500), it seems to have made him happy. He owns a basketball team, and he has a television network that buys the rights to do HD Transfers of whatever shows he wants to watch in HD. While the rest of us are at the mercy of the marketing departments guessing what we want, he can go make it happen. That's a pretty cool hobby.
Alex
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I hope he gets sued into oblivion by Google/Youtube. I'd like nothing more at this point than to see him fail miserably.
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So yeah, win-win for Cuban.
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Informative)
YouTube requires agreement to their TOS when one posts a video. The poster is liable for the conents of the video. YouTube complies with takedown notices. So if you don't like something that goes onto YouTube and you have the legal rights to it, you ask YouTube to take it down, and it's gone. Who the hell needs to waste time and money on a lawsuit when single letter ("Get my stuff off your site, here are the URLS") will get your content off YouTube. Taking up a suit against a company that is so compliant with takedown requests is only a moneygrab or an act of malice ("Let's sue them into bankrupcy, I can afford more lawyer time then they can.")
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??AA: "Just to play devil's advocate, why should we have to waste our time searching through all of these different computers to see if they have our content on them? Especially because even if we remove it all, it could easily be re-downloaded by someone else the next day. Our time is valuable to us, and if we have to spend some of it trying to protect our stuff, then that leaves us less time to sign new artists, or go on promotions, or count our money, or whatever."
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Mixed feelings about Cuban. (Score:2)
"When content went digital, the floodgates opened. Content could be delivered digitally in thousands of different ways, and the number of methods for distribution would only expand over time. To me this meant the power of the gatekeepers would diminish and the power of independent content creators and owners would increase"
http://www.blogmaverick.com/2005/03/26/let-the-tru th-be-told-mgm-vs-grokster/ [blogmaverick.com]
but your narrative here really strikes me as the
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*Tsk Tsk* Have we learned nothing? (Score:5, Funny)
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"When two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers."
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Only a moron would buy YouTube (Score:5, Funny)
It's a gamble (Score:2)
It's a risk, yes, but a calculated gamble.
It's not particularly expensive, Yahoo bought Broadcast.com in the billions (5bn, though I don't know how much of that was overinflated stock) and that seems to be a total dud:
http://news.com.com/Yahoo+completes+Broadcast.com+ acquisition/2100-1023_3-228762.html [com.com]
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Re:Only a moron would buy YouTube (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Only a moron would buy YouTube (Score:4, Funny)
Furthering his own interests... (Score:5, Insightful)
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commonly known as a PUP (potentially unwanted program)
or as we in the tech industry call it "spyware"
http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/redswoosh.net [siteadvisor.com]
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(Emphasis mine) Actually it makes perfect sense. To a legal simpleton anyway.
Grokster was sued by copyright holders over illegal distribution of copyrighted material.
Google/YouTube is being sued by copyright holders over allegedly illegal distribution of copyrighted material.
Grokster lost, therefore Google/YouTube will lose. Cuban is backing the horse that he thinks will win, and he believes he'll cash in.
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More on Grokster precedent (Score:2)
the Supreme Court's Grokster opinion, properly interpreted, strikes an appropriate balance. It preserved secondary liability as a powerful tool against copyright infringement. At the same time, it declined t
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Well, at least the database backups fit on an 8" floppy...
Open up a Western Front (Score:5, Funny)
In retaliation, Sergey Brin has just announced plans to buy the L.A. Clippers.
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What would make that even funnier, is if with Brin as owner, the Clippers won the NBA Championship. I would predict that the moment that happened, Cuban's head would not only explode, but the splatter would land in the form of a 350-page rant about how the Clipper's victory was the result of a Vast Conspiracy between the NBA Referee's association, Commissioner Stern, Google, and the Bavarian Illuminati.
As it is, anymore I'd say
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Re:Open up a Western Front (Score:5, Funny)
Next, Brin and Cuban agree that all copyright issues will be settled by best-of-7 tournaments between their respective teams. This proves to be too time consuming, so they expedite the process by substituting one-on-one NBA Live 07 matches using virtual versions of their respective teams.
The first match goes poorly, with Cuban accusing Brin of redirecting 90% of Google's computers to run a "hoop-bot" to improve his team's shooting accuracy. To ensure fairness, future matches are broadcast live on G4 TV. This proves to be an instant hit, capturing 100% attention from both of G4's viewers. A year later, Electronic Arts introduces "Madden Meta-NBA 08", where players control either a virtual Brin or virtual Cuban playing simulated NBA Live matches, available exclusively on the new SonySoft XStation720.
The game becomes an instant hit, and six months later Hollywood commissions a movie of the game of the company owners playing sports games of teams fighting for ...errr... for something or other, frankly we've forgotten by now. Probably a woman. Or a cat. Maybe an orphanage. Screw it, we'll go with an orphan cat-woman. Uwe Bolle will direct.
Suing for profit is a moral stand? (Score:5, Insightful)
However, supporting an individual's lawsuit, not because of the principal involved, but because you don't like them and think they're stupid, that's... well, childish. That's putting ego as more important than justice, and in theory, that's what the whole court system is supposed to prevent.
Isn't this just a form of vigilante justice by Cuban? "I don't like 'em, so they're going down."
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Isn't this just a form of vigilante justice by Cuban? "I don't like 'em, so they're going down."
Didn't you read the part where it stated the guy has billions so is very rich by most standards? Um, I think that most court
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This is a billionaire and his interests are not "principles", they are "principle".
There is money involved, and like any entrepreneur, he wants what doesn't belong to him. If he can make a gamble and win, he can tap gootube for a lot of cash.
As someone else stated, he needs a real hobby. Litigation is not a good one. He's worse than the ambulance-ch
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Out of th
I am the boss! (Score:4, Interesting)
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You guys need to learn that just because you have all the money you don't get to make all of the rules.
This is the United States of America. The people with all the money do get to make all the rules. What is interesting here is that both sides have "all the money". The winners will be the lawyers.
What is he getting? (Score:4, Interesting)
Let me tell you what he is getting (Score:2)
but the opposition is big and getting bigger.
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Your double negative baffles and confuses me...
Why you ask... (Score:5, Interesting)
Ted Turner wannabe? (Score:2)
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A stupid billionaire vs 'the people' (Score:3, Insightful)
The stupid billionaire? (Score:2)
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Too much free time (Score:3, Insightful)
Good ol'Cuban (Score:2)
it's awfully ambitious but if anyone can pull this off it would be him.
What a jerk. (Score:5, Insightful)
Contrast with this guy.
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So when was the last time you donated some money to charity? Who's the jerk now? The one who speaks without knowing a little more background info.
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Crazy, but right (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong. I think that the so-called "content-providers" should be HAPPY about the free advertising they get when clips of their stuff are posted on those sites. But we all know that they can't stand it, and that it is illegal. It probably shouldn't be, but it is.
And you know what? It doesn't seem fair that in a world where the RIAA is forcing grandmothers to cough up thousands and thousands of dollars for unknowingly sharing Britney Spears tunes from their PC, that big corporations like Google get a free ride.
Re:Liability (Score:3, Insightful)
The counter-argument is that should there be a system of active moderation? Well, I look at this way. Should Ginsu send a man 'round to every customer's house every now and then to ensure that no one is misusing their Ginsu knife?
Crazy, and wrong (Score:5, Informative)
This is one thing the DMCA got right, without such a protection of service providers, it would be impossible to run a site like
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Copyright is dead. Get used to it.
"Trust me, either a court will find that the DMCA doesn't allow this, or the DMCA will be amended to specifically forbid it."
No, it explicitly state this, it is not an 'interpetation'.
I suggest you read it. It's got good information on boat hulls.
It would be interesting to see them try to modify the DMCA. It opens the door for other modification to happen at the same time.
Knockon effect. (Score:5, Insightful)
This would be disastrous for the net. And for everyone in general, apart from those big media conglomerates who only transmit on their own content. This could, in one fell swoop, turn the internet from the mass of information it is now to just another broadcast mechanism for the big distribution channels (*IAA etc).
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Although I agree this guy sounds like a douche (except for the comments here about people who live in the same hood as him), but no one is going to "kill" the internet. What would most likely happen is that the internet would fracture. One half being a corporate based ad laden myspace tie-in shopfest, and the other being an underground fre
Just speculation but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Mark Cuban Declares War on GooTube (Score:2)
vendetta ? (Score:2)
he's gonna waste his time and money on something as stupid as this?
why doesn't he spend it on his Dallas Mavericks?
According to the NBA Conference scores page [nba.com], his Mavericks are getting creamed by the LA Clippers... (3:4 for the Mavs, and 5:2 for the Clippers)
What to do.... (Score:2)
Well it seems like Mark Cuban thinks the solution is to insert your other foot as well
He was way wrong on Google & youtube the first time and I'm sure that he is even more wrong now.
Cuban seems like what most /.ers want to be (Score:5, Informative)
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Wait, which is it: "He's a libertarian and objectivist" or "He's not a moron"? You can't have it both ways. Okay, I'm joking a little there, but...
Wait, you say he's a "salesman who got rich selling his company" and then you say he's "not a suit"? That's, um, well pretty common for a "suit". Indeed, most people would say that if your a salesman that got rich selling a company, and now own an NBA franchise, you are clearly a
YouTube has been down for 24 hours now (Score:2)
Nobody has mentioned that all of YouTube has been down for "scheduled downtime" for "new concoctions and formulas" for about 24 hours now. Something drastic is happening over there. That's far too long for a simple site update.
A frantic purge of copyrighted content may be underway. They already had one purge, right after the acquisition. They were down for most of a day for that one, too. This downtime is already much longer than the last one.
Cuban might be right.
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YouTube is back up, and there's definitely been a purge.
Gootube? (Score:2)
Mark Cuban vs. Donald Trump (Score:2)
Cuban owns a TV network - net video seen as threat (Score:2)
Half jokingly -- :-/ (Score:2)
Now he's just an ass.
This is what we call a... (Score:2)
Mirror, Mirror (Score:2)
Never! (Score:4, Funny)
Stick THAT in your cigar and smoke it.
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Dude, Mark Cuban can totally wheelie a bike and grind a rail on a skateboard.
This one time, he was skating and I saw him do a totally gnarly 360 off of some dude's face while the dude was all screaming like "NO WAY!" and then Mark Cuban landed in Bolivia and did an ollie right over these military drug guys with machine guns that were all shooting in the air so
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Seriously, most of us have grown out of that tired, cliched worldview dominated by high school stereotypes that weren't even accurate in high school.
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You're tired of stereotypes, so you trot out the old "mom's basement" expression?
And what the fuck does "go-getter" mean?
Better get those TPS reports on my desk PDQ, or I'm going to proactively synergize my boot up your ass.