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Only a 'Moron' Would Buy YouTube
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Sep 29, 2006 04:48 PM
from the moronic-like-a-fox dept.
from the moronic-like-a-fox dept.
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,'"
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Technology: YouTube Won't Sell For Less Than $1.5 Billion 178 comments
Joel from Sydney writes "According to a report in the New York Post, YouTube has informed potential buyers it won't be sold for anything less than $1.5 billion. The report lists Viacom, Disney, AOL, eBay and News Corp as potential buyers. Given that News Corp purchased MySpace last year for $580 million, is this a realistic figure?" From the article: "YouTube's stated business model is to 'pursue advertising,' but potential advertisers might be skittish considering industry estimates that roughly 90 percent of the content viewed on its site violates copyright laws. And at least one giant, Universal Music, is threatening to sue the company if its artists' songs keep appearing there. As it tries to focus on videos that don't use content owned by media companies, it yesterday launched the YouTube Underground, a contest to 'discover the most talented unsigned bands and musicians on YouTube,' backed by Cingular Wireless, Gibson Guitar and ABC's 'Good Morning America.'"
[+]
Technology: Google in Talks to Buy YouTube 157 comments
tessaiga writes "The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google is in talks to buy YouTube for about $1.6 billion. YouTube users watch more that 100 million videos daily, and the site's market share tops that of similar services offered by Google and other popular Web sites. This comes after a story earlier this morning that co-founder Sergey Brin is pushing for Google to cut back on the volume of products being offered, complaining that 'I was getting lost in the sheer volume of the products we were releasing'. Guess Google Video is one of the products making the approved shortlist."
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Technology: YouTube's Plans for a Google-Owned Future 102 comments
eldavojohn writes "Reuters is reporting on Time Warner's approach to YouTube's copyright problems. There has been much speculation that Google will be sued immediately over copyrighted material on YouTube but this is a case of Time Warner actually approaching Google to work out a deal on this issue. It appears artists and labels will have the choice when digging into Google's pockets either through a business deal or lawsuit. Which will they pick?" Meanwhile, the AP is reporting on the possible development of a technology to automatically screen content as it is posted to YouTube, which may sidestep some of these issues and disappoint users.
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Uninformed (Score:4, Funny)
Safe Harbor? (Score:2)
Maybe that won't stop some jokers though.
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I'm guessing that is a somewhat workable strategy unless some major player wants to buy it... then the content providers that are in competition with the buyer will swoop in and not only want a take-down but some real money just to make them bleed. And suddenly it's
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Re: (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.
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Actually, I tend to feel that the copyright holders have an advantage that the 'jokers' are (currently) localized to a few sites. At least yourtube has a policy to remove disputed content... clone #10001 may not.
Home users are getting access to faster and faster internet lines and streaming AV is becoming as common as browsing HTML pages, it can't be too long before there are many many more 'yourtubes', some may be more reluctant to remove content based on a simple l
Not to mention... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not to mention... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Not to mention... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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There's one born every minute (Score:4, Funny)
Funny... (Score:2, Funny)
1. Come up with an idea.
2. Find stupid VC's
3. ????
4. Profit!
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1. Come up with an idea.
2. Find stupid VC's
3. ????
4. Profit!
I don't even think the ??? are nessacary. The Vc pays you, you scram to jamaica and yoru done. The VC scams some retirement funds and the only losers are the end investor.
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.
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Ancillary Value (Score:2)
It just has to be a lesser expense than any other advertising outlet.
One of the reasons networks spend big money on sports leagues is to get people to see their ads for their other programming during the games.
Reminds me of the 0-day sites... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Reminds me of the 0-day sites... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
risk taking (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone suing U-Tube would be taking the risk of losing the lawsuit and setting a precident.
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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 th
Advertise movies. (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes and no. (Score:2, Insightful)
On the other, you've got examples like paypal.com - they've basically been enronning their ways around banking laws for years and no one has sued them to oblivion for not having a license, stealing money, etc.
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Ah, but that's just messing with the banks and the government. With YouTube it's much more serious, they're messing with the MPAA & RIAA.
Re:Yes and no. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
This is a surprise for what reason? (Score:2)
I could see an online video cartel (Score:2, Insightful)
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I can see why this is in the interests of the users. I can see why this is in the interest of YouTube. But this is in the interests of the copyright owners because...?
Not gonna happen with YouTube ceasing to be the YouTube we know. If they weren't interested in defending their copyrights we already wouldn't have a problem.
Why don't they just fix it? (Score:2)
He's just jealous... (Score:3, Insightful)
Mod Cuban -1 Troll (Score:5, Informative)
Well, according to this [youtube.com] the all time high is 33 million views, with dozens of others in the one to ten million range. I know these aren't all unique viewers, and I'm not an advertising expert, but that sounds like a lot of people to me.
Cuban cautioned advertisers against investing heavily in so-called viral campaigns that are spread by users beyond their initial point of distribution on YouTube or other video-sharing sites. But he touted opportunities to run commercials on high-definition television such as his HDNet network.
So he's basically bad-mouthing Youtube in order to promote his own network. To paraphrase Cuban himself, only a moron would believe everything this guy says.
DMCA to the rescue (Score:2)
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OB Simpsons quote (Score:3, Insightful)
$1.5b too low. One Word: (Score:5, Insightful)
Commercials.
As soon as YouTube places commercials in front of their vids, even if they cookie them to just 1 per hour per viewer, the money will be flooding in.
Here's why: YouTube's content review and tagging system for searches, plus their popularity and "stars" rating systems are perfect metadata for targeted ads. Not "somewhat fuzzily targeted" based on collected trends but directly. That car. That skateboard. THAT song. Learn THAT trick. Go to THAT place. All for sale "HERE".
People won't stand for too many, but tuned right the loss of viewers from annoyance versus the revenue from commercials' simple brainwashing techniques (think of commercials as competing social memes) will balance.
Um, No. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Mr. Cuban (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Does he mean that nobody has had enough money to sue Youtube?? WTF?? Once the RIAA get their head out of Mrs Jones' dial-up records, they might like to have a crack.
Its another story if he thinks there isnt much money to go after...
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Not quite sure why Youtube is allowed to exist, when anyone else that sets up something similar would just get shutdown. It's very strange.
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Re:Mr. Cuban (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Mr. Cuban (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
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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.
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Re:You avoided being a con-artist - good for you (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
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How about Russia [allofmp3.com]?