Mark Cuban/YouTube
Mark Cuban is a crybaby.
Selling Broadcast.com at the height of dot com frenzy, he wants to shut the door behind him, exclude all those who don’t play by the rules. He wants to see the death of YouTube, since they’re stealing the content and he’s investing money to gain a foothold in the movie/visual content business.
Yes, that’s how quickly the young become old farts. How Democrats turn into Republicans. How hippies become racists, wanting to keep the disadvantaged away from their McMansions, now being built behind gates.
Society is made up of rules, they call them laws, but laws are made to be broken. Or maybe you never cottoned to rock music. Or came to the party so late that a rock star was someone who was famous, as opposed to someone who played by his own rules.
Compare Mr. Cuban to John Lennon. Lennon made all that money and fought for the people, not himself. He was always true to himself. Which is why he’s still remembered a quarter century after his death, and Mr. Cuban will be forgotten minutes after his demise.
Go to: The Beatles. And get ready for BEATLEMANIA!
Seems quaint today. But back then we were ENRAPTURED!
You get John’s cheekiness. But what is truly stunning in this video is the SOUND! You’ll swear it’s lip-synched. But no, this is the Beatles playing some live gig back in ’65, with no tapes, no backup singers, no additional musicians in the wings, and they WROTE this hit!
Some Beatleologist might be able to tell me the history of this performance. But I’ve never seen it. And viewing it, I’m jetted back forty years to when music was the most important thing on the planet. It’s this power to affect hearts and minds that’s at the heart of YouTube, not copyright infringement.
It’s not like this footage, and that of other performers all over YouTube, was lost, it’s not like the owners didn’t know they had it. They were just too lazy, or too preoccupied, to exploit it. THAT’S what YouTube has done, shown there’s a MARKET!
But we don’t hear about this. We’ve got men in suits stating the proprietors of YouTube are bad guys. The music business should be uttering HOSANNAS! In an era when MTV plays no videos and they sell almost none at the iTunes Music Store. What we’ve got here is a car wreck you can’t take your eyes off of. Kill YouTube and you set the music industry back five years, at least.
Imagine a harnessed Napster. Instead of the underground sites we’ve got today. Imagine encouraged sampling rather than lawsuits and locked up content. You see a healthy business. One unshackled from not only MTV, but terrestrial radio.
Watch this video of "Ticket To Ride" and you’ve got to search for more Beatle footage. And if you’re unfamiliar, you want to OWN the band’s music. And if it were available in quantity, and at a low cost, WHY NOT??
But not only is NO Beatle music available to purchase online, this isn’t the paradigm the major labels are employing. They just want you to buy copy-protected files that are a bad facsimile of the CD for the same damn price. This is PROGRESS?
I really believe the businessmen of the entertainment industry have no compassion for their customers. They don’t think of the joy of experiencing their products, but only ways to maximize revenue utilizing old business models. The more stuff is easily available at a cheap price the more money you ultimately make. Did these guys not take math? Or study the mobile phone business?
So Mark Cuban? Shove it up your ass. You don’t have the balls you say you do. You’re just mad you didn’t have the cojones to start an equivalent service, worried about losing the money in your deep pocket. No, it takes people willing to risk who’ve got nothing to lose to create change.
And in this case, change is CERTAINLY good.
Fuck I want my MTV. There should be a campaign, I WANT MY YOUTUBE! Hell, hire Tom Freston to run YOUTUBE!
