Mark Cuban talks about YouTube - VIDEO

Mark Cuban was speaking to a group of advertisers in New York on Thursday, and the subject of YouTube came up. In typical blog maverick style, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and co-founder of HDNET told everyone exactly what he thinks of the online video sharing site. In this article from C|net, Cuban asserts that the people behind YouTube are "just breaking the law." He goes on to say that "anyone who buys that (YouTube) is a moron."

That is the tasty sound bite bit of the story, but if you click around a bit, there is more to it. Much of this latest Mark Cuban vs. YouTube story started with a post on his personal blog titled, "The Coming Dramatic Decline of YouTube." In that entry he goes into his thoughts as to why YouTube became so popular, and what it is that he thinks is going to be the downfall of the site. Cuban boils it down to the fact that if you take away all of the copyrighted material on the site, you take away the lion's share of the YouTube traffic.

And it doesn't end there. Yesterday Cuban posted a follow up to the original post. This one delves more deeply into the tenuous legal ground YouTube stands on where the DMCA is concerned. It also touches on the possibility of clones of the site, and the enormous cost of hosting and transferring all of that video. I think his comparison of YouTube and the early days of Napster is an apt one. It is an interesting read, and a subject that has been touched on briefly in the TV Squad comments.

Whichever side of the argument you fall on, we can agree on one thing, this is just the beginning. There is still much to hash out where YouTube and copyright are concerned. With the site showing up on every most popular list you see these days, clearly they are making some noise. Unfortunately that kind of noise often draws the kind of attention that brings a world of problems with it. It should be interesting to see how it all plays out.

Personally, I agree with Cuban on most of this. I think YouTube is sitting in a very precarious position. I'm not convinced that their claims that they fall under the safe harbor provision of the DMCA are going to hold up. And even if they do, that doesn't prevent any of the thousands of copyright holders that own the content from taking them to court to try and change that. Given the fact that YouTube has that huge bandwidth bill, and still no solid plan for monetizing their idea, those lawsuits, with or without merit, could ultimately destroy them. Feel free to weigh in with your thoughts in the comments.

And just to tie it all together, here's a crazy video of Mark Cuban discussing the Wiggles... hosted by YouTube.