David Kronke was appointed Mayor of Television after a bloodless coup in 2000. Since then, he has improved infrastructure, championed greater educational opportunities and fought for reforms that have utterly erased corruption and incompetence from the television industry. Since Mr. Kronke has ascended to power, Television is a far better place. Down the YouTubes
(Seems like only yesterday that Viacom’s own Stephen Colbert was using YouTube to promote his show via the Greenscreen Challenge.)
Cuban’s been out in front of this from the beginning. He scoffed when Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion, noting that having a deep-pockets company owning what amounts to a pirate station opens it up for all sorts of litigation.
“YouTube proponents want everyone to believe that every impression is a new found impression that can only benefit the brand,” Cuban wrote. “Others, myself included believe the opposite. That the last thing you ever want is for another entity, that is completely out of your control, becoming the defacto manager of your brand.”
His solution? Referring specifically to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences ordering YouTube to expunge all Oscar-night clips from the site, Cuban wrote, “I would have created a video that showed the first 10 (seconds) of the clip, then had 4 minutes of a billboard that said, ‘Great videos from the Oscars telecast and exclusive behind the scenes videos are all available at Oscars.com.’
“In addition to the billboard in the video, you would have an active link to Oscars.com on the Youtube video page. I wouldn’t post this video 1 time. I would post this video 100 times.
“And I would do the same thing for EVERY moment and segment in the Oscars.
“The reality is that YouTube viewers will grow tired of scanning through every video and just click over to Oscars.com where they will see all the unique video that isn't anywhere on YouTube along with the Oscars.com paying advertisers.”
Essentially, Cuban’s advocating using great swatches another site’s bandwidth to tout your own.
So, YouTube – beloved for bringing the Museum of Television and Radio to our homes, as well as for providing as much weird junk as you could possibly ever want to see – faces some tough choices ahead. If it scraps all its films with copyrights owned by corporations staffed to the gills with attorneys in favor of only quirky home movies, it becomes a less-emphatic destination; it transforms itself from Wal-Mart into the mom-and-pop shop that Wal-Mart shuts down. And it certainly doesn’t earn its $1.65 billion.
And what about the hilarious fake movie trailers and video montages lovingly edited together from scenes from film and TV shows by fans and people with too much free time on their hands? They’d likely fall under fair use, but you know how it is with corporate attorneys.
Enjoy YouTube now, before it looks like the virtual equivalent of New York after a blackout, when the only thing you’ll find to watch are those guys putting Mentos in a Coke bottle.