I’ve never met Mark Cuban, but I like him a lot. I love his courtside ranting and raving, I like the whole billionaire in a T-shirt thing, and I really like the fact that he lets things pretty much just hang out on his blog and says what he feels — how many billionaires or CEOs do that? And I even like his blog when I think he’s wrong, like I did with the whole “only a moron would buy YouTube” thing. But sometimes I think maybe he could use an editor — or at least a friend.
In his latest post, Mark takes another stab at the whole Google-YouTube-DRM thing, but this time he does it in a kind of stream of consciousness format that makes me wonder whether he isn’t spending some of those billions on British Columbia’s leading export. He talks about looking for music and videos, and how YouTube’s new quicklist makes it easy to find things, and programs like Total Video Converter let him convert movies so he can watch them on his iPod. And then he loses it — here’s a sample:
Wait a minute, who is the little guy hovering in front of me ? Dang, it looks like a Google lawyer ! Is he using a juet propulsion pack to fly ? No, its a floating Segway. Wow ! He is saying “No problem mark. You didnt crack any DRM, we dont use any !. You just downloaded a file from one of the most popular sites in the world and converted it to a format that works for your Ipod. We put it up there for you to take, so take it !
If copyright owners didnt want it there, they would have sent us a Take Down Notice !. I must be right because millions of people do it every day ! You wonder how I can fly with this Segway ? Its the DMCA Safe Harbor laws keeping me safe and floating. Take all the music, movies and videos you want, our users will upload more ! Enjoy , enjoy, enjoy !
Mark, buddy — time to step outside and maybe get some fresh air, dude. Or at least put down the bong for awhile. In other Cuban-related news, Deep Jive Interests has coined a new buzzword: To “Cuban.”
