Is The Internet Dead And Boring?

Mark Cuban wrote Friday that he believes the internet to be “dead and boring.”

Cuban argues that:

“Some of you may not want to admit it, but that’s exactly what the net has become. A utility. It has stopped evolving. Your Internet experience today is not much different than it was 5 years ago….Web 2.0 is proof that the Internet has stopped evolving and stabilized as a platform. Its very very difficult to develop applications on a platform that is ever changing. Things stop working in that environment. Internet 1.0 wasn’t the most stable development environment. Todays Internet is stable specifically because its now boring.(easy to avoid browser and script differences excluded)”

He goes on to state that “The days of the Internet creating explosively exciting ideas are dead. They are dead until bandwidth throughput to the home reaches far higher numbers than the vast majority of broadband users get today.”

On a weekend where a Wall Street Journal article explaining the LOLcats phenomena is a leading story on Techmeme, there could certainly be some argument in favor of the notion that all that is old is new again, and that the web has become at least a little boring. Ultimately you can judge. Read Mark Cubans full post here, and let us know what you think in the poll below.

Is The Internet Dead and Boring?

• No: you're kidding, right?
• Yes: there is nothing new
• Only on Weekends

View Results

Breaking: Veoh Sues Universal Music

Perhaps new Veoh CEO Steve Mitgang is the kind of guy you don’t want to try to intimidate. He just called me to say that Universal Music made one too many threats to sue his company. To protect themselves, they are suing Universal Music in federal court and seeking what is known as a declaratory injunction to bar Universal from taking legal action.

Given that the lawsuits tend to flow one way against the video startups, this is a major surprise.

In the press release, Veoh says they acted based on “unreasonable threats” from Universal and filed the lawsuit under the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA. In a phone call a few minutes ago, Mitgang told me that the two companies met recently, and that Universal made it clear that they would be suing Veoh for copyright infringement in the near future. These kinds of threats are not idle - Universal tends to follow up with actual lawsuits.

When a company feels that a lawsuit is imminent, they can strike first to head it off. Since Veoh feels it has protection under the DMCA for its business model, they are striking first.

Mitgang also mentioned to me that Universal Music has never sent them a DMCA take down notice of any kind. He says that they would have complied immediately.