John and Sally not needed?

Hardly surprisingly, Mark Cuban is enthusiastically applauding the Viacom suit. He doesn't seem to want to recognise how the combined impact of convergence, personalisation and peer-to-peer connections is likely to change the way media is produced and consumed.

"Viacom doesnt need John or Sally to upload video for them. They are more than capable of doing it themselves. If Viacom wants to put up snippets, scenes, mashups, mockups, quarter, half or full episodes of anything they own, there is nothing to stop them. Its their choice. If they are smart, they will fill every Gootube Server they can reach with their content in a manner that drives viewers back to Viacom properties. They will experiment with every option, including those that engage and involve their viewers, to see what works and what doesn't work and what makes them the most money. Why not ? Google is paying for all the bandwidth."

Trouble is John and Sally are starting to feel the same way about the likes of Viacom. I do understand how their business model is fundamentally threatened by content 'sharing' GooTubers in the ways that Cuban describes, and it may well be that one reason that they perceive the social media as threat rather than opportunity is that they simply don't fancy the challenge of adapting to the new circumstances, and may rightly suspect that it is likely to be new players in the content marketplace that end up doing this best.