• The SEC doesn't have a statement from anyone saying that Cuban knowingly ordered an insider trade.
• Regulators dropped an investigation of Mamma.com over allegations of securities-law violations days before starting their investigation of Cuban. Cuban's unspoken implication: Someone must have made a deal.
• Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, as seen on Dancing with the Stars, makes a better target for ambitious SEC staffers than the forgotten Mamma.com team.
• Oh, but Cuban's got a blog. Eat this, SEC!

The SEC alleges in a civil action that Mr. Cuban sold his entire 6% ownership stake on June 28, 2004, after learning that Mamma.com was raising money through a private investment in a public entity, or PIPE. The next day, on June 29, the company announced the PIPE financing and shares of the company dropped by more than 10%. By selling his stake, the SEC alleges, Mr. Cuban avoided more than $750,000 in losses.

In a PIPE transaction new shares are issued at a discount to the current trading price. An announcement of a PIPE transaction is often followed by a drop in the stock price as shareholders anticipate their stake will be diluted.

(Illustration by the Wall Street Journal)

Conference

• Connectivity still an issue. Wifi out on Monday and the major celebs showed up to kowtow to King Arrington and Jason
• There is a secret mutiny going on with startups in the pay-to-play Demo Pit. They gave out poker chips to ticket holders to vote for their favorite startups, there 3 colors one for each day to decide. A single company, through the use of hot and semi naked booth girls has managed to monopolize Day 1's chips (80). The winner of the chips would get a review and extra publicity. So to counter the startup — which does something stupid — there are now alliances going on where other startups are grouping together and sharing their chips so that one company doesn't win. So far about 20 companies are in this coup.

Dinner

• Showed up for Nicole Jordan's dinner party at Lulu's. The bill was like $3k and I had to pay like $100 when I thought the meal was free.
• Calley Nye showed up, brought by Larry Chiang, but very quickly cozied up to Barney Pell of Powerset. They were hugging and cuddling and the guy had his hand on her thigh/knee the entire time.

Party

• Held at club Temple, they intermixed the TC50 crowd with the young kids that just randomly showed up. Music was loud and obnoxious and the crowd was a weird mix of uncomfortable geeks and drunk kids.
• snuck into VIP floor with Mark Cuban and entourage, bought him a beer
• Met [former FuckedCompany blogger] Pud and spoke to him about startups and AdBrite. he's finally very happy with with the way it's working right now.
• Jason calacanis showed up and he was pretty drunk most of the time.

After party

• At the W Hotel bar/lobby with Jason Calacanis, Mark Cuban, Frank Gruber.
• Mark had a gaggle of blondes surrounding him. Most look 18. He kissed and rubbed quite a few them right next to me as I tried to get drinks. One was very upset that Mark wasn't giving her enough attention.
• Jason Calacanis is blizted enough to be stumbling everywhere
• Met a drunk girl that work for Geni/Yammer. She's apparently David Sak's BFF, some major assistant to the producer of Rush Hour or something. Got recruited from LA to handle "book-keeping and HR." says she's under NDA but eventually figured out that she has stock and they're working out a way to sell Yammer, a side project, by the next month.
• Calley showed towards the end of the night and approached Jason Calacanis while his wife was standing next to him but then Mark Cuban.
• As the party ended she's managed to convince him to let her hold his hand while he's hugging and kissing the other blondes.
• When we got kicked she managed to get herself into the front seat of Mark's surburban along with his entourage and left.
• Jason left in a limo at 2:30am with a very disgruntled wife and most likely not able to wake up for TC50 Day 3

In our world of social networking and high-definition television, Mark Cuban is the 1,000-pound gorilla in every room. But in the boardrooms of professional sports, he's just this punk Internet new money kid who doesn't understand how proper decorum and deals get made. And Mark Cuban is almost 50 years old! He's old enough to be Mark Zuckerberg's dad!

• Lucian A. Bebchuk, professor, Harvard Law School
• Frank J. Biondi, Jr., former president and CEO of Viacom
• John H. Chapple, president of a privately-owned equity firm
• Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, cofounded HDNet and Broadcast.com, legendarily screwed over Yahoo in its purchase of Broadcast.com
• Adam Dell, managing general partner, Impact Venture Partners; brother, Michael
• Carl C. Icahn
• Keith A. Meister, Icahn crony
• Edward H. Meyer, chairman and CEO of an investment management company
• Brian S. Posner, private investor

(Photoillustration by Jackson West; photo of Icahn by AP/Mark Lennihan)

YouTube has become the poster child for the old saying "we are losing money on every sale, but we will make it up in volume." YouTube is broken. The reason is Hulu. Hulu posts clips on YouTube. Those clips cost Hulu nothing, generate traffic to its Hulu site on which it sells out. Two areas that Hulu is stomping Youtube: 1. Revenue Per Video 2. Revenue Per User. Hulu has the right to sell advertising in around every video on its site. YouTube has that right for only [a] small percentage of videos because YouTube hides behind the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. By next year, Hulu will have more total revenues than YouTube. The more traffic Hulu generates, the more money it makes. The more traffic YouTube generates, the more money it loses. Maybe they think they will make it up with even more volume?

(Photo by eschipul)

The board of directors of Yahoo has acted irrationally and lost the faith of shareholders and Microsoft. Microsoft's bid of $33 per share is a superior to Yahoo's prospects. It is irresponsible to hide behind management's overly optimistic financial forecasts. It is unconscionable that you have not allowed your shareholders to choose to accept an offer that represented a 72 percent premium. Yahoo and Microsoft would compete with Google. Shareholders asked me to remove the current board and negotiate a merger with Microsoft. I therefore purchased approximately 59 million shares, formed a 10-person slate, sought antitrust clearance to acquire $2.5 billion worth of Yahoo. Heed your shareholders and negotiate a merger with Microsoft.

• Lucian A. Bebchuk is Professor at Harvard Law School.
• Frank J. Biondi, Jr served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Viacom, Inc.
• John H. Chapple [is] President of a privately-owned equity firm.
• Mark Cuban, owner of the [Dallas Mavericks] National Basketball Association franchise, cofounded HDNet and Broadcast.com.
• Adam Dell is the Managing General Partner of Impact Venture Partners.
• Carl C. Icahn.
• Keith A. Meister, of Icahn Enterprises G.P. Inc. and Icahn Capital LP.
• Edward H. Meyer serves as Chairman, CEO of an investment management company.
• Brian S. Posner is a private investor.
• Robert Shaye is Co-Chairman and Co-CEO of New Line Cinema.

It's the same sermon he's been preaching since a blog post last August — namely, consumers want HD, the Web can't deliver HD, ergo the Web is boring. Which is funny, because in the last year Cuban has also shown up at South by Southwest, BlogWorld Expo and eTech. Hmm, telling both sides what they want to hear — is Cuban looking to run for public office? (Photo by AP/Matt Slocum)

Sabala, who started at Digg on February 6 as community manager and marketing director, is a SXSW veteran. (You can tell because she calls it "South By.") She was set on the idea of a party at the festival, but by Friday, she and the rest of Digg had decided it was a nonstarter. The next Monday, though, she gave it another try. A call to a Napa winery landed a sponsor for wine. A call to a contact at PureVolume secured the club for Tuesday night. With that, Sabala had a party that bridged SXSW Interactive's last day and the SXSW Music's first.

A few blocks away at Six Lounge, Revision3 was also bridging music and the Web, with a live debut of "Rock Band," Randi Jayne Zuckerberg and David Prager's homage to the guitar-wielding videogame at a party hosted by Rana Sobhany. Kevin Rose ruled Austin last night — he also cofounded Revision3.

Prager, Revision3's COO, told me Monday about the times he'd put money from his own bank account into Revision3's coffers to make sure it made payroll. Those lean days are long past for both of Rose's companies. Even as the stock markets waiver, Web startups seem flusher than ever. A Microsoft ad deal has buoyed Digg; the online-video boom is taking care of Revision3's paychecks.

Are we going to see this kind of party scene at next year's SXSW? Let's be clear: SXSW was a good time, not a boundless bacchanal. Nothing smacked of excess: A mild dose of star power is enough to intoxicate the deskbound Web designers who attend the festival. But I noticed that no one talked about the stock market once the whole week. SXSW was a comfortable bubble. As the Webheads fly back home, will they even feel it popping?

• Don't start a company unless its an obsession you love.
• If you have an exit strategy, its not an obsession.
• Hire people who will love working.
• Know how your company will make money.
• Know your core competencies and pay up for people. Outside core competencies, hire people cheap
• Shoot yourself before you spend money on an expresso machine.
• No offices. There is nothing private in a start up.
• As far as technology, go with what you know.
• Keep the organization flat.
• Never buy swag.
• Never hire a PR firm.
• Make the job fun for employees. Reward them. My first company, I would walk around handing out 100 dollar bills to salespeople.

Our admittedly biased answer: Duh. We're not alone in this opinion. Leitch wrote his piece for GQ and it ran in an issue that's been out for weeks. He then quoted from it for the Valleywag post. Since when must a reporter ask nicely before writing a piece on someone? According to Cuban fanboys, noted journalism experts all, since forever. Some even believe that Cuban and GQ signed a contract before the magazine could proceed with an article. Anybody up for some mindless outrage?

We're sure that he doesn't care about ethics, only blog hits and garnering attention for increased book sales. — Miguel

Totally not ethical. He basically lied to you and then used your interview for his own personal gain. I'd be more than upset with him and hopefully, the magazine is as well. That was very unprofessional in my opinion. His work for the magazine should be kept separate from his blogging life. — tiffany

Completely unethical, possibly illegal. The magazine that paid for his travel and wage, likely owns all of the intellectual property generated. When the author took that property and used it for his own benefit outside of the company on blog, he may have violated the law. Even if he did not break the law, it was unethical, and bad journalism. These are new issues that have to be tested and figured out though... — PRoales

At one point, I asked Cuban about his interest in buying the Chicago Cubs. I already knew what his answer would be; I'd recently spoken to baseball sources for a story for New York magazine that made it clear Cuban, no matter how many billions he had, would never be allowed into the grey-haired old-fashioned clique of baseball owners. The guy has no chance. But, if just to promote himself as a tilter toward windmills, he stayed strong.

Don't count me out yet. Don't count me out. All [baseball owners] have to do is call other NBA owners, and there are NBA owners who are part owners of Major League Baseball teams, who see me in the meetings. They know me beyond what the media write and how websites like Deadspin characterize me. They know that I contribute as a partner. I hope, along with the money, that that's the important thing.

In our world of social networking and high-definition television, Mark Cuban is the 1,000-pound gorilla in every room. But in the boardrooms of professional sports, he's just this punk Internet new money kid who doesn't understand how proper decorum and deals get made. And Mark Cuban is almost 50 years old! He's old enough to be Mark Zuckerberg's dad!

Cuban's hardly the only one to run into an old-money, new-money fight in the sports world. Paul Allen had his own issues after buying the Portland Trail Blazers and the Seattle Seahawks, and Research In Motion CEO Jim Balsillie has run into nothing but brick walls with his attempted purchase of the Pittsburgh Penguins and continued moves to try to move the Nashville Predators to Hamilton, Canada. These are new thinkers, with new ideas and new ways of doing business. This is not how professional sports operate, so they are shunned as radicals, or rejected all together. Most often, their idealistic notions of "changing the game" are crushed under the unceasing inertia of The Norm. Owning a sports team doesn't turn out to be nearly as fun as they thought. What is new and different must be crushed. This is why Mark Cuban will never own the Cubs, no matter how much money he waves in front of the Tribune Corp.

Every sports fan has daydreamed of falling into sudden riches, buying their own sports team and running it on their own whim. Now, all three of those things are equally unlikely; money just isn't enough anymore. The engines of finance and technology are driven by innovation; sports runs away from it, terrified. Mark Cuban will never be the next Ted Turner unless he changes his last name to Selig.

Could this person really be my friend? Could this person really be someone i do business with ? Did I actually know this person? To any of you who I have deleted or ignored. Its nothing personal

Not that Cuban is passing up the chance to sign up his superfans. The Dallas Mavericks owner will list some of his own '90s bubble-era tech-company posters, as well as memorabilia from his sports team, appealing to his two core audiences of supporters, which should guarantee Radical Buy a slightly better chance of succeeding than Cuban had of winning Dancing with the Stars.

When he says "freeloaders," he's talking about companies (like Joost or Skype) that rely on peer-to-peer distribution for bandwidth. But as Ars Technica points out, Cuban was happy to finance P2P file-sharing client Grokster's legal defense. He also invested in peer-to-peer file-distribution startup Red Swoosh, and profited when it was acquired by Akamai. His new complaints probably have more to do with the library of high-definition TV content he's building through HDnet and his other ventures — and the fact that he needs to cozy up to Comcast for distribution, both online and in its HD lineup.

• Mark Cuban's money shot
• Mark Cuban feels no pain
• Mark Cuban bores the bojangles out of us
• Mark Cuban geeks out

Vista sucks. Vista is being kept alive by corporations. They tried to make everything backward compatible and there is too much bullshit now. Mac OS X is what it is, closed. Google is completely dependent on that PC. That's a bet I'm not willing to make. Companies are public and they get yelled at for making [broadband] investment. The markets are about the big funds wanting returns and that will hurt us.