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MySpace Founder Sues to Halt MySpace's Censorship Activities
Written by centernetworks - November 3, 2006
Brad Greenspan, the man who was behind MySpace before it was sold to News Corp in July 2005, issued a press release today that he has filed suit against News Corp over alleged censorship. In addition he has started a web site called CensorSpace.com.
Some tidbits from the release:
Since News Corp's acquisition of MySpace, there have been various reports of the censoring of content, including the following examples:
* Earlier this month, it was reported by Mashable.com that MySpace is blocking Stickam.com webcam codes.
* In January 2006, MySpace disabled links to Revver, a rival site. MySpace eventually reinstated Revver links following public complaints.
* In 2005 and 2006, MySpace also reportedly turned off a MySpace blog forum where MySpace users were discussing the censorship issues.
* In December 2005, MySpace disabled links to content hosted by YouTube. MySpace, under pressure from its users, eventually re-enabled the YouTube links.
MySpace blocks usage of the products it deems competitive and goes a step further by effectively slapping gags on the mouths of the over 100 million MySpace users by replacing any attempts by users to type the url of sites like 'stickam.com' or 'vidilife.com' into a blog or profile with ' ... ... ' .
I certainly hope that this will not be something that happens to YouTube as well.
COMMENTS - Add New Comment
The administrators at MySpace.com dumped my account in violation of the law AND my First Amendment freedom of speech rights on the afternoon of Wednesday 1 November and now they won't allow me to create a new account!
I was innocently using the services of the site, innocently networking and making new friends, when suddenly I found myself facing the following message: Invalid ID, The member has closed their account, or the profile has been deleted, and then I discovered an email from MySpace telling me that my account had been deleted for a "violation of Terms of Service".
I'M GOING TO DISPROVE THEIR LAUNDRY LIST OF FALSEHOODS RIGHT NOW:
"Your MySpace account has been deleted for violating our Terms of Service. "
So-called "violations" which they did not specify, but just gave their usual laundry list of false reasons.
"This is usually due to one of the following:
* Nude images, sexually suggestive or violent photos"
Of which I had NONE OF.
"* Covering our banner ads with HTML"
I wouldn't know how to do that so that's out of the question
"* Harassing other users"
Impossible. I may have rebutted a liberal here and there but in the end it's my GOD-GIVEN right backed by the United States Constitution to rebut any lies uttered by the Left.
"* You do not meet the minimum age requirement "
I'm 35 so that obliterates that reason.
"* Spamming the classifieds, forums, bulletins, or other sections of the site "
I NEVER did any of that; I simply USED the FEATURES of the site in protected free speech.
"* Attempting to artificially inflate scores"
I don't know how to do that!
"* Scripting the site"
I don't know how to do that either!
"Your account cannot be restored. If you choose to return to MySpace, please follow the rules. "
WHAT!? I PLAYED BY THEIR RULES AND THEY STILL DUMPED MY ACCOUNT, IN VIOLATION OF THE LAW!
This is all the more reason News Corporation MUST terminate the administrator who illegally dumped my profile with almost 900 friends, for the SECOND TIME in one month, and all the more reason MySpace.com MUST be prosecuted for fraud and for civil rights violations!
Additionally I keep trying to get MySpace Customer Service to unsubscribe me to blog post subcription notices for this particular account but they refuse to do as they are told, thus interfering with my right to network in peace AND my freedom of speech AND my ability to create a new account on MySpace.com; instead they keep sending me the same form letter email telling me what to do with my browser settings:
"Hello,
If you can’t create an account, we recommend deleting your browser's cookies and temporary internet files and then close all your browsers and try signing up again.
(Note: Mac users should use Safari or Firefox.)
Make sure you didn’t add any spaces at the end of your email address or verification code.
If someone is using your email address please send us an email from that email address to verify you are the legal owner and we will be able to delete that fake profile.
If you are shown an error message when attempting to create an account, please copy and paste it into the body of your reply email.
If this does not answer your question, please click:
http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=misc.contact
Thank you,
MySpace.com
==============
This message has been auto-sent no fewer than five times in the past three days. I am FED UP WITH THEIR LYING, THEIR FRAUD, THEIR INATTENTION, AND THEIR ABSOLUTE INTOLERANCE, NOT TO MENTION THEIR BLATANT DISRESPECT OF AND INTERFERENCE WITH MY RIGHT TO DISPLAY WHAT I WANT TO DISPLAY ON MY PROFILE!
IT'S CALLED FREEDOM OF SPEECH, AND MYSPACE AND NEWSCORP WILL BOTH LEARN TO RESPECT MINE!
When I try to call MySpace.com headquarters I keep getting directed to voicemail, and NOBODY EVER RESPONDS TO THE PROBLEM!
So what I have done is I have started a report to the News Corporation Workplace Alert Program, I have reported this to the Santa Monica Police Department (regarding fraud on the part of MySpace), the FBI, the California Attorney General's Office, and also I have already contacted numerous media outlets.
So far I have received autoreplies from John Kasich at Fox News, two from Channel NewsAsia including one from Yeo Hock Lin, Front Page Magazine, NBC Nightly News, and The Today Show. My hope is that one of those outlets will pick up the ball and run with it and expose the frauds that make MySpace a nightmare for those who choose to stand up for their beliefs and innocently exercise their freedom of speech and their freedom to network in peace.
And it shouldn't take some crybaby with a partisan axe to grind spewing some lying liberal sayso to get someone dumped from MySpace or any other network like that.
I am at the point where I am about to file legal action against MySpace to get them to fix the problem so I can open another account.
I have also notified one of the executives at NewsCorp via email and I may even go as far as to write a letter to MySpace, Fox Interactive, AND NewsCorp officials to get them to act upon this problem by making the technicians fix the bug, firing the administrator who dumped me from their site and infringed upon my freedom of speech, and start treating me with respect!
I have had ENOUGH of their rubbish! I am planning upon drafting a Social Networking Bill Of Rights and I may even see about getting politicians to make such a bill of rights the law of the land.
It has come to my understanding that Brad Greenspan---the founder of MySpace.com---has filed a lawsuit against them already. They do NOT want to face TWO simultaneous lawsuits...and I may decide after bankrupting MySpace.com that I will shut down their site permanently and immediately, bulldoze your headquarters, and turn them into a housing estate.
AND
I will definitely buy out ALL foreign investment of Fox News and make sure the coverage goes FAR to the right, PLUS I will ensure that real conservative commentators like Michael Savage AND Neal Boortz have REGULAR NIGHTLY SHOWS on Fox News Channel.
MySpace AND NewsCorp definitely MUST take action to correct the problems and injustices I have experienced at MySpace.com if they want to avoid a devastating lawsuit.
And BTW I have sent the same letter to NewsCorp Human Relations Executive Vice President Ian Moore and to Chairman and Chief Exeuctive K Rupert Murdoch that I have sent to MySpace Customer Service.
SO IM HAVING SIMILAR PROBLEMS, THEY HAVE DELETED MY PROFILE MANY TIMES FOR NO FUCKING REASON AND NEVER TELL YOU WHY, JUST BULLSHIT.. SO THEY ARE DOING THIS TO MANY FOR NO REASON SO I WANT TO GET INTO HELPING START A LAWSUIT AGAINST THEM, CONTACT ME IF THIS IS POSSIBLE
Buddy, just go to my blog on Blogspot, it should show up in a link from this post, you can hit the contact link there...
MW I am preparing to pay the filing fee at the federal courthouse at Springfield in the AM and submit some additional evidence that MySpace keep sending me newsletters and other messages even on an email address to an account I can no longer use, and this is AFTER phone calls, letters, and emails to MySpace, Fox Interactive, and NewsCorp.
Maybe the judge will see the light and order MySpace to fix their bloody problems already!
so how did that trip to the courthouse go?
MySpace is private property. The owners of it can let you on it if they want to... or not. No surprising you're not welcome seeing as you're a crackpot right-wing looney!
It's like me having a party at my house. My friends are welcome. Anyone else is not. Would you actually sue me if I refused you entry? Go ahead and try it.
This is why you will lose to MySpace. You haven't a chance in hell. It's not about "freedom of speech" because you still have that right, as you are proving by posting online!
Hey Brian,
I am totally with you on this MySpace lawsuit thing. I also think that a 'Social Networking Bill of Rights' is a great idea in this day and age. The thing is, despite all their rules and blah blah blahs, MySpace is, for better or worse, becoming a deeply personal and very meaningful way for people to build REAL relationships all over the world. When MySpace does something as callous and cold blooded as deleting a member's profile, as they recently did mine (I have no clue as to why, and I doubt I will ever get a human response to my e-mail inquiry), they are literally severing those relationships. These are real relationships with real emotional and psychological bonds.
What MySpace is doing is akin to the phone company canceling your phone number because you said some words they didn't like. Well, it's not their fucking choice what you can and can't say, at least not in the United States of America! Let's not even let NewsCorp pretend like they have some moral high ground in running MySpace. DirectTV sells more porno to their subscribers every year than Penthouse publisher Larry Flynt! Just on that basis alone, their rules for MySpace are laughably hypocritical.
I don't doubt that other members, or past members, of MySpace have suffered real financial, emotional, and psychological trauma as a consequence of having their MySpace profiles deleted.
The rules of MySpace are also highly subjective. How EXACTLY should obscene or offensive material be defined? By whose standards? MySpace has user all over the world. If we go by that, then MySpace would have to first define and reconfigure MySpace in all of the countries of its subscribers in order to conform with the laws in those countries which govern this type of issue. If not, then MySpace should automatically defer to the most conservative laws which any single member must abide by in his or her country. This would essentially eliminate over 90% of the content on MySpace. Welcome to a world run by fundamentalist conservatives.
In any case, back to the lawsuit: I think a strong case could be made for a class action lawsuit seeking reparations for emotional and mental distress. Those MySpace bastards, as if acting as God, simply hit their delete button without giving even a second's thought to the lives they are literally destroying. Yes, in some cases, I am absolutely certain lives have been destroyed through MySpace's inhuman disregard for and disrespect of the thoughts, feelings, and well-being of its members. The site exists, explicitly, for the act of social networking. The site provides sometimes the ONLY conduit for these social networks and relationships to exist.
The fact that all MySpace users have e-mail addresses is not even a usable argument that MySpace members actually do have another way to communicate, as many members never think to trade emails, since no one ever thinks that their profile could be so arbitrarily destroyed. As MySpace states on its site, once a profile has been deleted, it cannot be recovered. That means that hundreds to thousands of hours, millions of words, incalculable memories and expressions of emotions, affection, and communication have also been wiped away in the stroke of a few keys. Forever lost. MySpace may as well have set fire to my house.
The fact that there is no tool or method to export messages or other communications in MySpace to, say, a user's personal website or e-mail is evidence that MySpace is trapping its users. Through brutal emotional whippings of its users, some have re-established new profiles, but are now often too afraid of the hand of God, er, I mean MySpace, to openly or freely express themselves. They have, essentially, been re-programmed to accept and operate in the reality which MySpace controls. This is akin to beating a dog until it learns to obey its master.
MySpace is evil. It is abusive and domineering. It operates with complete disregard to the safety and well-being of its members. A business which acts with such abusive, egomaniacal power over its customers (yes, members are still customers, despite MySpace being mostly a 'free' site) should be shut down or be forced to reconsider its operating policies. MySpace may not have deep pockets, but Newscorp certainly does. They should be held responsible for the negligence of their subsidiary business.
Sincerely,
Simon Kwan
shanghai.simon@yahoo.com
You know, you might have a very good idea for a lawsuit there. I am hoping to head that off if I can successfully convince a federal judge that MySpace have clearly caused too many problems with their hamfisted arbitrary nature.
I cannot say MySpace and NewsCorp are necessarily fundamentalist, but if you check some of the articles that have appeared at the Accuracy In Media website at http://www.aim.org you will find that NewsCorp have acceded to raving neoliberals, including Patrick Kennedy's environmentalist wacko screed from late '05 and even Rupert Murdoch's open support of the Hillary Clinton campaign for president...both of which have also been cited at Newsmax.com ...meaning MySpace and NewsCorp are hardly conservative. Fox News appear less conservative than you might think; both liberal and conservative views are heard there, though, but that is something you won't find at ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, NPR, PBS News Hour, CNN, CNBC, or MSNBC. Even AlJazeera and the BBC and Channel NewsAsia do a better job of reporting both sides of an issue!
And THIS fundamentalist libertarian conservative, fed up with the Diet Coke/Diet Pepsi/Diet Bush/Diet Clinton political cola war, is suddenly silenced for his fiercely independent views?! FUCK THAT!
When you consider that MySpace operate what is effectively a monopoly --- a recent source put the figure of social networking traffic in the United States going through MySpace at 89 percent --- you have to consider that NewsCorp, Fox Interactive, and certainly MySpace need to ensure a level playing field for ALL users communicating legal points of view.
What a damn shame it is that ordinary folks like you and me get censored off for no good reason, yet they let every cam tramp, paedophile, and Bush-basher with such irrational partisan hatred they want to KILL the president run wild and scot-free --- you know that MySpace are LOADED with problems and need to be reformed in a big way.
Already Brad Greenspan, the founder of MySpace, has sued NewsCorp and MySpace over their censorship of certain websites' material like Vidilife and YouTube, see censorspace.com for more details.
Nice reply... I laughed so hard I cried while reading this. especially the "destroying lives" part. Very funny post... I like your sarcasm and sense of humor, some people might even belive you are being serious.
Dude!!! sounds like you need brain surgery.
You are a true gem of an idiot :).
to begin with you have no idea what free speech is. And myspace are pefectly within there rights to ban whoever they like from doing whatever they like... and or including that which is not in there terms of service.
not that I understand why you'd want to use such a badly designed and implemented site anyway.
In violation of what LAW? Your are a moron. If you dont like myspace, don't use it, get a freakin website or something. I hope you are joking, and not really so stupid. Do you think they would really care if you sued them? If any retard could bankrupt and shutdown a business simply because they are a retard, there would be no businesses in this entire nation! Good luck. Moron. you have no rights on their server. They probably just cancelled your account because you are retarded. I would do the same thing.
You do not have any speech rights on someone else's server. They can terminate your account for any reason. It even says so in the terms and agreements that you agreed to (maybe you should read that.) The service is free for godsakes, you have nothing to bitch about (or sue about). Pay for your own hosting service if you do not want these things happening to you. Get a clue and a life. You should really get out of the trailer park more often.
check out this link http://techdirt.com/articles/20070411/171341.shtml to see how dumb everyone thinks you are.
If you bulldozed and shut down myspace wouldn't you be terminating thousands of people's accounts without reason and taking away their "rights?" Then you would be sued by thousands of people and they would bulldoze your trailer park and set up an amusement park, and you would have no money and no place to live and no internet connection. Then you would have to sue all those people for taking away your "right" to have a place to live and money and an internet connection. You would have to write letters to all those people and the amusement park and then get pissed at all of them becuase they would not respond to your dumb ass. sounds like alot of work and a bit counter-productive. Thank god in real life things don't work the way you seem to think they do. The world would be insane. How did you ever pass the math part of this form to post here?
silly rabbit, myspace is for kids.
Can I go round your house with a spray can and write how many innocent civilians have been killed in the illegal war started by George W Bush?
Would you let me?
If you wouldn't, can I sue you for not letting me have "freedom of speech"?
Silly, isn't it? Gain a brain, loser, 'cos you will LOSE that lawsuit!
My kids' have gotten their profiles deleted before for no obvious reason. It sounds like you are taking this WAY to personally. My kids aren't even political extremist weirdos of any sort. If you do an internet search, you will see that people that use myspace as religious, political, etc. platforms get their profiles deleted ALOT. This is NOT the fault of myspace, but people with opposing views ganging up and reporting the other party to my space admins. I bet if you got all your wacko buddies together and complained/reported profiles of liberal members, you could get their profile deleted too. Try it! that is what others are doing. I don't think they care about what side you are on like you think they do. If you want a political platform that nobody will jack with, make your own website. If i ran myspace I would delete EVERYBODY'S profile who tried to use MY service that I OWN to express any religious/political views and use MY bandwith as a speaking platform for them. Surely it would be a violation of my GOD-GIVEN rights and LAW OF THE LAND if I could not do what I want with MY server that I am letting the public use for free???? Yes, Myspace sucks ass, that is why I would never use it in the firts place, but If you think you can do a better job, start your own equivelent to myspace. No one is stopping you, and it was started by a kid, surely you could do a better job. But they CAN a will delete your profile for no reason at all, and it is well within their GOD-GIVEN rights to do so. You are just paranoid, they dont really care what you think and have better things to do besides go around and delete profiles they do not philosophically agree with. Your issues have NOTHING to do with "free speech." So quit your crying, start a Brian's Space and you can do what you want with it.
I also got deleted 2 TIMES NOW!!! With the same bogus "violation of terms of service" letter, none of which did I do. What can we do about this???? I'm tired of losing all of my friends because I keep getting deleted by MySpace. Brian, please contact me at bree744@aol.com
dont worry, they werent really your friends and did not like you anyway.
I too have had a similar problem with myspace shutting down my account, for reasons that remain unsubstantiated, and without any response explaining how my personal biography can be deemed to be a violation of terms of use. This is a complete sham, am i supposed to change facts about my own life just because some people are offended by it. Silencing the critics is the first step on the way to totalitarianism. I have also had two email accounts closed by agents of the same person who complained about my myspace blog. wdf? It's my story, not theirs, so what is the damn problem. Abuse of power makes myspace a victim of violating its own charter, you would think they would see the irony wouldnt you?
I wont be silenced
mad
no, you are not supposed to change facts about your life. Nobody cares. Why don't you just post your autobiography somewhere else?
As so very often, a lot of Americans show a great lack of knowledge about what exactly the First Amendment says. It is not about being able to say what you want on a privately owned server. It is about what your GOVERNMENT can and cannot do with regards to regulating speech. If you visit a forum, you follow the rules of the forum. If they feel that you violated the rules, or even if they just don't like you, they can just kick you off. If they annoy enough users, the will eventually lose their position, but that is their choice, and their loss. There is no law in the US or anywhere in the civilized world that I know of that gives you the right to a MySpace webpage. You don't like the way they operate? Find a site that does. It's a simple as that. I personally wouldn't touch MySpace with a 10 foot pole, among other reasons the ones you've already stated.
This is a joke right? You have no rights on a private server like MySpace is. They can terminate you whenever they feel like it for whatever reason. Good luck wasting your money trying to sue because you are not going to win.
The constitutional right has nothing to do with a private company's internet server that they let you have access to idiots.
Agreed. This is just about the dumbest thing I've seen. This is NOT what the Constitution protects, and you insult it with your petty hissy fit.
If Brad Greenspan was one of the co-creators of myspace, he can still have a share of the company. He didn't have to sell all shares of the company, meaning he still has say so. He can sue if he wants. The Law works in mysterious ways. Loopholes galore. (With the right lawyer)
Maybe he sold it to News Corp under the conditions of it being the way it was , not censoring it like they're doing.
I have my OWN songs that I PRODUCED on imeem and I can't even use the flash player on my profile. Copyright issues my ass. You can use make a fake band account and their crappy flash player tho. Strange....