• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer, September 29, 2006

Will copyright problems put YouTube out of business? Billionaire Mark Cuban predicted this week that the video-sharing site will be "sued into oblivion."

"The only reason it hasn't been sued yet is because there is nobody with big money to sue," he reportedly said, adding that anyone who buys the site is "a moron."

But we're not so sure. Certainly the companies that have complained the loudest-like Universal Music Group-could ask for injunctions against the site even if YouTube doesn't currently have the money to pay large financial damages.*

Rather, it seems far more likely that, for all their talk about copyright infringement, the execs that run the entertainment companies have come to realize that YouTube benefits them far more than it hurts them.

Yes, the site likely has clips belonging to Universal, and every other content owner out there. But those labels get the kind of publicity that money can't buy when users watch those clips.

Consider, NBC eventually came around. When the "Saturday Night Live" skit "Lazy Sunday" first surfaced on YouTube, the NBC lawyers went to work cranking out demands for its removal. But a few months later, the attorneys were looking into distribution deals instead.

Now, NBC isn't just touting itself by clips online; it's also inviting consumers to use the platform to create their own network ads. At the OMMA conference this week, Beth Comstock, president of digital media and market development at NBC Universal, outlined a contest on YouTube that involved consumers to make their own promotion for "The Office."

Other companies are likely to come to the same realization as NBC--that it's more useful to have YouTube around than to litigate it out of existence.

*This paragraph was amended after the column was posted.