IP Democracy: Is This Still MySpace?

The Independent reports that “[a]ngry members of MySpace, the personal file-sharing website for young adults, are accusing Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation of censoring their postings and blocking their access to rival sites.” Thanks to Barb at thesocialsoftwareweblog, we picked up on this during the last days of December.

The incident highlights the culture clash triggered by the joining of community-oriented MySpace to the News Corp. mass media conglomerate. But it seems too early to tell whether it’s a sign of serious problems ahead or simply an awkward moment on the learning curve of a company that will ultimately find a way to profitably bridge the cultural divide. News Corp. and Rupert Murdoch have surprised the skeptics before, and a USA Today story published today suggests that the site continues to grow in popularity, with a whopping 47.3 million members (the Independent, which reported 38 million members must have been using somewhat out of date numbers).

The Independent, which includes quotes from some digruntled MySpace bloggers, sums up the incident this way:

[S]ubscribers to MySpace…discovered that when they wrote to each other about rival video-swapping site YouTube, the words were automatically deleted, and attempts to download video images from YouTube led to blank screens. The intervention by News Corp in the traditionally open-access world of the web - in particular the alteration of personal user profiles - provoked a storm of angry posts in online “blogs”.

The protests gathered pace, and when 600 MySpace customers complained and a campaign began to boycott the site and relocate to rival sites such as Friendster, Linkedin, revver.com and Facebook.com, News Corp relented and restored the links. However, MySpace managers promptly shut down the blog forum on which members had complained about the interference. An online notice said the problem was the result of “a simple misunderstanding”.

A spokesman for MySpace said it would not explain how the blocking of YouTube came about, nor how it was resolved, nor whether in future it would continue to block links to rival websites or censor messages between MySpace customers.

Posted by Mitch Shapiro on January 10, 2006 12:10 AM to IP Democracy