Youtube has a huge problem and they have dug a hole so deep they are never going to be able to fix it unless they change their approach to copyright.

There is no reason to discuss further whether or not Youtube or Google Video is elgible for protection from the DMCA. That topic will be decided by the courts. The question now is whether or not using the DMCA is a good business decision.

The fundamental business issue in claiming protection behind the DMCA is that it requires Youtube to not know what videos are on its site. Unless an uploader is copyright owner that has signed a deal with Youtube giving them knowledge of the videos they will be uploading, by law Youtube can’t have any idea what videos are on the site or where.

Think about that for a minute.
How hard is it to sell advertising around content when you have no idea what the content is ? Its impossible. Its like selling advertisers a lottery ticket , and we all know how good an investment a lottery ticket is for the ticket buyer. For some reason the media seems to think that there isn’t advertising on Youtube because of advertisers fear of User Generated Content. Thats not it. Volume impressions are still sellable. As is volume video. There is a huge market for mass video. Unfortunately for Google, they take a huge risk of liability from the DMCA in generating revenue next to copyrighted materials they don’t have permission for. So to play it safe , they don’t sell advertising around videos they don’t have licenses for.

So what is happening amounts to Google basically subsidizing the hosting of video for the entire internet. Fortunately for Google, they are probably the only company that could afford to lose that much money a year which has to run into the 100s of millions of dollars per year at this point.

Unfortunately for Google, even with their new attempts to protect copyright, it doesn’t change the particulars of how they have to follow the DMCA and what their advertising sales options are.

Which leads to this question. Should Google start proactively checking uploaded videos for copyright violations and if they did, how would it change Youtube and its relationship with copyright owners, visitors , advertisers and their bottom line ?

It wouldn’t be a technical challenge to review for copyright. It wouldn’t be a financial challenge in hiring and training the thousands it would take to review the videos after all, this process would allow Google to finally know what content they have and sell ads around the videos. And it wouldnt be a difficult evaluation process. A quick smell test would be easy, with any uncertainty being sent to uploader for confirmation of ownership,

Would the number of videos uploaded and allowed fall off a cliff ? Does the take down notice process actually work, which would mean that there is no real net affect on the number of videos available to visitors ? Would users get so upset they would find another site that flaunted the DMCA as a replacement ?

If there is a chance that Google loses any of the many lawsuits and faces Billions in damages, which there is, how big a chance is that and should Google start to cut their losses now by making the change.

Taken as purely a financial decision, I

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I hate to lose. Fortunately, i didn’t. Even though I didn’t get the votes to stay on as long as I hoped for. I won in every single way possible.

Five time I got to experience the rush/fear/excitement of knowing that when the music starts 20mm people were going to see me do something for 90 seconds I had never done before, and while I did it, I had to find a way to put that aside and love every minute of it. I did. Thats a win.

For 8 weeks I got to get up every morning knowing that no matter how sore I was, I had a goal that required me to challenge myself physically and mentally from 2 to 6 hours or more every single day. I did it. Ioved doing it, and I lost 30 lbs doing it. Thats a win.

Probably the most rewarding part of being on the show was just being able to be me. I had no say over the music , the video packages they did or how they presented me on the show.. The show people were doing what they thought would make great TV and they obviously are phenomenal at it.. ( I still haven’t watched a single one of the shows. I hate watching myself . All I see are the flaws. ). All I had control over was working as hard as I possibly could, making as many friends as I could, and enjoying every single minute of the experience.

What it reminded me more of than anything was the feeling of being a kid and moving to a new neighborhood. The fear, the excitement, the uncertainty, the newness of it all. Not knowing if I was going to be picked first or last for the game and whether or not I would live up to either . Knowing that feeling again. Thats a win.

Thank you to everyone who supported me with their votes, emails, texts, posts and everything else. You motivated me and made it all the sweeter.

And thanks to Kym Johnson. I couldn’t have gotten any luckier than having her guide me through this entire process. She is an amazing teacher and now, a better friend.

Thanks to my family , friends and co workers for filling in for me in so many ways to allow me to experience all of this. I know it couldn’t have happened without your help , love and support.

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Viral Video. its the holy grail of user generated content. The video that is so much fun, that it is passed from person to person until millions of people have seen it.

Unfortunately for 99pct of viral video creators, there is no financial reward beyond the satisfaction of being able to tell your friends .” you know that video ….., i created that, or that was me in it”.

Viral TV on the other hand is the holy grail of TV profits. Anyone who thinks that the Internet is going to take over and replace TV has never been around or been involved with Dancing With the Stars or American Idol.

Being on Dancing with the Stars has opened my eyes to how different Viral TV is from Viral Internet Video and how much more powerful it is.

On the Internet, I can create a video, put it on Youtube and spend hour upon hour promoting the video. I can spend any amount of money promoting the video. It really doesn’t matter all that much. Its impossible to know which Internet videos are going to ‘go viral’. If it was any other way, they would be episodic with millions of people watching videos from the same creator, over and over and over the years. That just doesn’t happen.

On TV, it costs a lot more money to play the game, a lot more money. But the platform is far more scalable and ubiquitous.

Its no secret that I’m not going to win Dancing with the Stars by being the best dancer on the show. Fortunately for me, votes from the judges for my dancing skills count for only half my score. The other half is driven purely by the number of votes I get from the general public. So trying to “get the vote out” is an important component of success on the show. I practice dancing 4 – 6 hours a day. I try to spend just as much time working on reaching voters.

(http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=6075710747 if you are a facebook user for a sample)

12 Contestants, all their family , friends and associates are out trying to create demand for the show. Emails, social networking, group events, radio & TV interviews, anything we all can come up with to make people care about what we are doing and to vote for us. Half our success is dependent on creating an ever growing network of people who will watch the show and./or vote for us. Its Viral TV.

But that’s not what makes it incredibly powerful. Unlike the Internet, Viral TV has removable and replaceable parts. This is the 5th season of Dancing with the Stars. There is a new crop every season and every season the same effect happens. Everyone on the show works their butts off trying to create viewership for the show and viewers watch and determine what will make them vote or not vote for a particular competitor.

Viral TV is worth hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Viral Video. Not so much.

The point here is that rather than spending time trying to come up with the next Viral Video on Youtube, if money is one of your goals, maybe the real opportunity is creating the next Viral TV show. That will get you paid.

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I wanted to interrupt my Dancing with the Stars posts (but not the shameless plugs, call 1 800 VOTE 411 on Monday between 7pm and 830pm ) to discuss what I think has become the hallmark of media coverage.

Vulnerability.

Read any newspaper. Any Magazine. Watch any news program. Any gossip or entertainment program. There is one single them that runs continuously: The Search for Vulnerability.

It doesn’t matter what walk of life you are in. It doesn’t matter what profession or year in school. Whatever group you participate in or hover around. There is now a blog, website, social network, column, reporter, video, segment and ??? to cover it. The audience size can be 1 or 100 million. It doesn’t matter. Someone is out there searching for your vulnerabilities to report or for the vulnerabilities they think you will be interested in knowing about.

There is someone hoping they can snap a picture or video of you at a vulnerable moment that can be leveraged into a payday, career or opportunity. There is someone who wants as many people as possible to think you aren’t a good…. you fill in the blank, and then call your boss, senator, customers, friends and tell them why they don’t like you and why they shouldn’t either.

Why ?

It just seems like there are an ever growing number of people, particularly those in the media, who want to encourage people to find what they think is the worst of people. Their most vulnerable side.

Hopefully at some point this will change. That vulnerability will stop being currency and be a private matter that we all respect as a universal trait

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Once again the support of the voters pulled kym and I through.

Its hard to describe the feelings of hearing our names called as being “saved”. My reaction was so spontaneous, it caught even me off guard. The strongest feelings came from the realization that your support was responsible for our success.

I never make predictions and I have no idea whether next week is our last week, or the first of more, but I do know that part of being successful on the show is paying attention.

I pay attention to what the judges say. I think a lot of people expected me to not take criticism by the judges very well. Those people don’t know me very well. I know what i know and know what I don’t know. I don’t know ballroom dancing. I do know I have a lot of room to improve and the only way that is going to happen is if I listen and take the judges feedback to heart. Even if it means being picked on like the last kid chosen for kickball every now and then.

I also learned from people who have worked on DWTS for a long time that the judges votes are AT MOST 50pct of value assigned to each contestants scores. Which of course means that to be successful its just as important, if not more important to work just as hard at communicating with the voters as is to get good scores from the judges.

I recognize that the judges scores can influence how many voters choose to cast their votes. So if I’m going to be successful and earn your votes, I have to work just as hard at communicating with each of you. Which is exactly why I read each and every blog post. I read each and every email. I do Icerocket blog searches and read what bloggers post. I encourage people to email and ask friends and co workers to vote. Not recognizing the value of each of your votes is not paying attention. I try to always pay attention to the rules of the game.

But lets get back to Dancing. This week we have the Samba. I loved the Waltz. It was fun, smooth and far easier on my body. The Samba is more like the Jive. It doesn’t have the jumping, but the up and down and hip action means that i have a hard time going to my left. I cant turn my left foot out. Cant thrust my left hip out. I just dint have the muscles or flexibility in my left leg because of my hip replacement. So when you watch our Samba, you may get a little chuckle watching our entire routine go right.

Speaking of laughs. The Waltz was serious. The Samba is fun. I can’t tell you what song we will be dancing to, but I can tell you that its from the 60s and our routine is going to be a tribute to the dances of the 60s and a quick pogo pogo tribute to the movie Strictly Ballroom. We are going for fun. lots of fun.

Finally , one last thing. I have gotten a bunch of emails asking to find out more about me. Boring, but if you are interested, here are some old blog posts that will provide you some history.

Thank you again, and lets do it again next week !

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First things first. Thank you to everyone who voted for kym and I and kept us alive this past week. I knew the Jive would be tough on me and it was. It was the first dance where I botched a step and it showed. One portion of it i was supposed to hesitate a beat and I didnt, throwing us off as we circled. We were able to come back together and get back on beat, but the judges definitely noticed it and docked me points. Thats the challenge of live TV. Its also going to motivate me to work even harder on my waltz this week.

The waltz is all about posture. This week we have a great song. Even better its a song that isnt one I would normally sing along to. So it should be much easier to just put on my “dance face” and find “my inner dancer”…Hopefully

Practice has been going well this week. We head back to LA on Sunday after practicing 6 hours a day this week.

Learning a new dance is an emotional rollercoaster. Yes, practicing all that time can be tiring. My legs hurt and if the schedule creates a situation where we practice till past midnight and then start again at 9am the next morning, to say my legs get sore , wouldnt quite do it justice.

I didnt know what the Viennese Waltz was. Heck, i didnt know there were different types of waltzs. So trying to pick up the steps, the turns, the posture was the first step. Next came actually learning the routine Kym put together for us. As with the jive, when I first start learing the routine, there is always something that seems impossible for me to learn. Kym will show me the step. I will try it. Then we do it over and over and over again. Some steps come easily. Others, not so much.

This week there was a promenade travel. It required about 24 steps in combination at full speed. Literally I felt like I was running to cover the distance we needed to cover and to make the beats work. Im a tech guy, so I tend to look at the steps as a sequence of instructions, which I write down and try to learn by looking and doing. Its not unusual for me to have a piece of paper in my hand with the steps and directions on them as I learn a step. My approach wasn’t working. It was just too fast for me to process and translate to my feet.

Because I wasnt making any progress on these, Kym decided we needed to move on to work on a different part of the routine. Something called “Naturals” . Much easier for me. More like a 3 count waltz step. We practiced over and over and then as we tried to improve on it, it dawned on me that these “Naturals” steps were similar to the Promenades . The steps were the same, but the changes of directions were more extreme and the pace and distance were faster and longer. Of course I thought I had just found the solution to all my problems and told Kym about my breakthrough. AT which point all she could do was laugh at me and tell me that she had been trying to tell me that the Promenade and the Naturals were very similar and I just had to learn one to get the other.

Who knew ?

Its the breakthrough like this one that all of the sudden re energizes our practices and pumps up my confidence. One day i feel like Im never going to learn this thing and the next, Im looking back at the “impossible”, thinking its easy.

Thats the first hill of the dancing with the stars rollercoaster. The 2nd is actually doing it live, and the 3rd of course is waiting on Tuesday to find out if all of you have voted for me.

I promise that I am working hard for you. Thank you to all of you who have voted by phone, by email and bigger thanks to all of you who have sent emails, forwarded emails and called friends, family and co workers asking them to vote by phone and email. The stories and feedback I have gotten are amazing !!

What ever success I have on the show is all thanks to each of you !

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Tomorrow night Kym and I dance the Jive. this week has been different than the past weeks of practicing in so many ways. We didnt get our song till Tuesday night, meaning we had 6 days. The same as everyone else of course, but dang. Knowing that Monday is going to get here a lot faster than ever before definitely gave me a lot to think about.

But that wasnt the worst part. Jive is easily the most physical of the dances. Just about every step is a jump from the balls of my feet. Not a problem for my right leg. A huge problem for my left. (the hip replacement left the muscles in my leg far weaker than my right). And not only was all the “action” supposed to be high energy and up, but the basic step is supposed to be knees up with a quick kick that is supposed to end with your foot basically kicking yourself in the butt around bringing my feet together while in the air. Yeah, like thats going to happen..

The mind was strong, but the body was weak. There were steps , or more precisely, technique of steps that i was just not able to do. Worse yet was the practice. By the time we got to a routine I could do, we had to practice it again and again and again. I’m sorry, I don’t care if I was 21 or the 49 years old that I am, practicing the routine 6 hours a day, every day, is exhausting and I dont want to even explain what the following mornings felt like.

I dont want to sound like Im complaining, but I guess I am. But hey, if Im going to blog , I might as well talk about it all.

So the Jive is not going to be easy for us Monday night. The hope is that all of you that voted for Kym and I will vote again to keep us alive. Your vote is going to be even more important to us Monday because all of Dallas will be watching the Cowboys take on the Bills. The Cowpokes are amazing this season, so Im thinking most Dallasites will not have voting for Mark and Kym as their Monday night priority. Which is another way of saying that I really need everyone’s help to get people’s attention from 7pm to 8:30pm Monday night and to take a break from the game to call 1800 VOTE 411 or for that matter, just call while you are watching the game ! Go to ABC.com at halftime. Email your friends and have them get behind us..

As always, thank you for all your support. It really means a lot to Kym and me

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I can’t thank everyone who voted via phone or email for Kym and I as much as I would like to. To say I was surprised to not only move on, but to not be under the red light would be an understatement. I thought there was a good chance we were goners. The only reason we weren’t is because of your votes. THANK YOU.

I wish I had the energy to write more , but I have been up for 36 straight hours and I need to crash.

After the show last night we practiced from 9pm to 11:30, i got back to the hotel around midnight. That would not ordinarily be of note, but I had committed to do interviews with the media on the east coast to discuss our moving forward on the show and my new hip. Being in LA, doing early morning East Coast shows meant being up at 3:30 to start interviews before 5am LA time. I tried to get 3 hours of sleep. I didnt get any.

The interview sessions lasted till about 9:15 and from there I went to start rehearsing with Kim. That lasted till about 4pm. It wasnt all that productive, by the end I was like a zombie.

So here I sit in my hotel, tapping this post out with toothpicks keeping my eyes open. I didnt want anyone to think I didnt appreciate all the support Kym and I received.

As I told every entertainment and news show that interviewed us after the show and this morning, the support of people who read this blog, the support of the many bloggers who got behind Kym and I and the Facebook and Myspace nations and networks that rallied behind us are what kept us alive on the show.

The Nerd Herd was in full effect. This was truly an internet showing and I cant thank everyone enough and I truly hope we earn the same level of support next week.

Time for me to get some sleep

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We have worked hard. the adrenalin is pumping. I got to check out my costume for tonight. Which is pretty cool. not something people are going to expect from me. We have really changed up the look. Hope you like it !

I have to be down in rehearsal in about 20 mins. Believe it or not, this is a little bit more nerve racking than last week. This morning we got to work with the orchestra for the first time. Well after we went through it once. At the same speed as the CD they gave us (ABC picks the music btw), Kym really felt that the tempo of the song was too slow. So boom, she got the orchestra to speed it up.

Easy for them, not so easy for me. Its not a little bit faster, its A LOT faster. Fortunatey , after dress rehearsal, we will have about 90 minutes and kym and i can try to work on the little things that were based on timing. Talk about a challenge !

It still wont change the fact that I am going to go out there and have a blast. HOpefully the smile will be big enough you wont notice if Im a little off in a few places..

And of course, DWTS is all about the vote. I need everyone to get everyone to dial 1 800 VOTE 411 tonight from 8pm EST to 9:30EST and then go to abc.com and register as many addresses as you own and vote for Kym and I !

Here is the link to register

and one more thing. Win Lose or Draw, I can’t tell you how important all the posts and emails of support have been over the last week. That have meant a lot to me. Thank you so much !

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