Mark Cuban's comments about YouTube's impending legal problems grabbed a good share of headlines. Journalists and bloggers went haywire when Cuban said "only a moron would buy YouTube" because the website is "just breaking the law." His blog post "Riddle Me This Copyright Gurus..." describes a future with man YouTubes and no control over what is uploaded.

Another sanguine comment was made by ZDNet's Donna Bogatin. Her post about a Wall Street Journal article by drama critic Terry Teachout was a rebuttal to a criticism of Universal Music Group's Doug Morris. In response to Morris's claim that YouTube owes UMG "tens of millions of dollars," Teachout called for a "high-culture TV and radio programming" to be distributed free of charge on the Internet. "Supply creates its own demand," Teachout wrote.

Bogatin didn't miss the fact that Teachout's article was available to non-subscribers only as a free sample. "Perhaps Teachout’s next content democratization project will be to help tear down the pesky Wall Street Journal pay walls so that all Wall Street Journal stories can be read 'free, whenever you want.'"

Yes, how dare Doug Morris protect have an interest in securing what he considers proper compensation for use of his company's copyrighted material. Some nerve. Teachout, who lives in a world where the arts survive largely on public funding and charitable donations, needs to understand that in this case writing grant proposals is not the road to a successful business model. There exists a market with a buyer (YouTube) and sellers (UMG, and others). The market is going to need to work this out.