Mark Cuban, the NBA’s family-friendly, white collar bad boy (not pictured), was fined 25 large for badmouthing referees again, this time for these comments made via his Twitter account during the Mavericks-Nuggets game on Friday (as seen on MyPhillyNetwork).

how do they not call a tech on JR Smith for coming off the bench to taunt our player on the ground ?
11:25 PM Mar 27th from web

scary part of that play: Same crew chief from game in Denver where they missed call – last play of the game & 1st JRSmith/Wright issue.
11:35 PM Mar 27th from web

But then after tweeting about the fine, Cuban got in a spat with the megablog Fanhouse’s Twitter, run by Matt Watson. Cuban claimed that Watson had violated copyright law by citing his tweets in his account of the incident.

ASYLUM POLL: Should The NBA Be Fining Mark Cuban For Twittering?

Cuban: are tweets copyrighted by default ?

NBAFanHouse: @mcuban That’s like saying anything written on a blog is only intended to be read by RSS subscribers. Obviously that’s not the case.

Cuban: @NBAFanHouse not true at all. Just because i want to max out audience doesnt mean you can use it.From from me isnt free to u to publish

NBAFanHouse: @mcuban I’m hardly a copyright lawyer, but “news reporting” seems to fall under the guidelines of fair use …

And then fellow Tweeter RedsArmy jumped into the fray:

RedsArmy: @mcuban Unless you’re set to “private”, anyone can go to your twitter page and see what you’ve said. IMO, that’s a big difference.

Cuban: @RedsArmy Since when did any tweet become public ? Its for followers/subscribers

Obviously, we side with FanHouse, and Cuban’s angst with bloggers has been documented enough for me to think that he might be just looking for trouble more than defending a sincere point of view. Twitter is just nerd heroin anyway. Let’s see some Sudden Adult Death Syndrome strike there, please.