It's bad enough that the Feds are still breathing down his neck over purported insider trading. Now Cuban must grapple with the loss of access to Time Warner's 13 million video subscribers.

"Wish I could get HDNets back on TWC, but I can't," Cuban tweeted yesterday, indicating he had failed in his efforts to get Time Warner to reverse its yanking of the network a few days earlier.

Cuban had been trying to get the flagship HDNet station out of Time Warner's marginal "HDTV Tier," which costs an extra $5 per month, and into a more widely-seen subscription package. Time Warner subscribers get a wide variety of HD channels even if they don't sign up for the "HDTV Tier."

Apparently the self-styled media maverick pushed the issue too hard, because now he's off the system entirely despite an offer to significantly reduce HDNet's fees.

The cut means CBS-newsman-turned-HDNet-star Dan Rather is off the air in New York, except for satellite customers.

Perhaps all this stress and conflict explains why Cuban was hitting the dessert table so hard at Dow Jones' "D" tech conference the other day; watch him work the free conference snacks in the background of the Beet.TV video below.

• 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)

Regulators frown on free communications between knowledgeable company executives and information-hungry investors. LinkedIn offers "compliance" tools, but those tools amount to letting the fox electronically monitor the henhouse. Hedgies surely realize this, and will see LinkedIn's lax policies as a selling point. (Other firms which connect investors with company insiders have, at some expense, created systems which allow the experts' employers, not just the investment firms, to monitor contacts.)

If it gets in trouble, LinkedIn will likely plea that it didn't know how its networking site was being used — the standard we're-just-a-platform dodge. But it will be hard to claim that for two reasons. First, LinkedIn is touting the account managers it's providing who will actively help traders use the service. Second, CEO Dan Nye previously worked at Advent Software, a company which provides portfolio-management software to Wall Street firms. It's not like he's unfamiliar with the SEC's disclosure and monitoring requirements. Rather, one has to think he knows just how expensive complying with those rules are, and that rejiggering LinkedIn's software to obey them will make LinkedIn Research a nonstarter.

It's not a stretch to imagine how an ambitious government prosecutor could make a case for LinkedIn aiding and abetting insider trading. The law doesn't even require that money change hands; exchanging inside information for a thumbs-up reference on LinkedIn could very well qualify as a breach of the rules.

But that assumes anyone in Washington or New York is paying attention. Unlikely, given the mortgage mess. LinkedIn will likely go public on the basis of its hedge fund-juiced revenues long before an overtaxed SEC gets around to looking at how, exactly, the avaricious traders of Greenwich are getting their information.

My strategy: I plan on buying shares of companies just before I write about them, and selling quickly afterwards.

Don't worry, the tech blogger was just talking about a fantasy market. Still, if this isn't insider trading, it's still a great way to get himself scooped every morning.

The Web 2.0 Stock Market [TechCrunch]