IP Democracy: Sounds of Wall Construction at MySpace?

Yesterday and in an earlier post I reported on claims that MySpace was blocking its users’ access to online video service YouTube, and also censoring blog posts complaining about this blocking. According to the latest post by MySpace user and blogger Salvor, “MySpace censorship continues.”

It seems that censorship of videoclips on Myspace is very unpredictable. It seem it has nothing to do with p*rnography but seem to be because of business interests. Is the following statement true? “At a Citigroup investor conference, Rupert Murdoch…outlined future plans for MySpace.com. He said the company plans to add a video download feature where users can post and share videos”. If it is true it explains the censorship of videoclips but makes the situation much worse than I thought.

Salvor cites “a comment someone wrote on [his] flickr photo” that suggests MySpace may be blocking access to Revver.com which, like YouTube, is an online video posting service.

Anytime I post videos in comments or even just on my page the links come up as broken. Even if I just write revver>.com<…it comes up blank…Its full censorship of any media that is not affiliated with MyspaceFOX. Write Myspace and tell them you want your video and music files back

Salvor goes on to say that he tested out this claim and confirmed that “You can not write revver.com or link to videoclips on revver on Myspace.”

While some of these problems could be technical glitches or “simple misunderstandings,” it also seems quite possible that NewsCorp/MySpace is experimenting with selective blocking of “competing” services to gauge the likely impacts of doing it on a larger scale. If using this form of Walled Garden construction only generates a handful of complaints (600 complaints is a pretty small number compared to 47 million members), then such blocking may be viewed as a smart business move by News Corp. management.

And the way the MySpace’s response was reported by the Independent suggests the blocking may very well have been intentional:

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.

And there are other sounds of garden wall construction at News Corp. For example, Cynthia yesterday reported here and here that News Corp.’s U.S. satellite company, DirecTV, appears to be on the verge of an investment providing it with access to a WiMAX wireless broadband network, which would provide the media giant with a bypass network to support its own alternative to the Two Tiered Internet being built by telcos and cable operators.

The reported MySpace blocking incidents, the News Corp. WiMAX investment and the ongoing discussion of DRM and other “wall-building” tools, brings me back to this comment by Observer Online editor Rafael Behr.

The News Corp strategy can be simply pieced together: take possession of the web allotments that all but the most hardened geeks depend on to pitch their blogging tents, then rent them out; sweeten the deal with privileged access to music and movies. The goal must be to marshal the energy that bloggers currently expend on creating their own content into the consumption of industry-manufactured, pay-per-view content. Big Media want to retain the marketable frisson of Citizen Media and weed out the current culture of activism. The way to achieve this is by monopolising not only the copyright material that web users like to play with, but the tools that make it so easy for them to play.

I still believe there will continue to be space (though maybe not at MySpace) for content & service gardens to bloom free of walls and user-unfriendly toll-booths. And, to some extent, the more Walled Gardens that exist, the more competition there will be among them, which means some may adopt more open and user-friendly strategies.

But I also believe that we as citizens, and the public officials we elect, should pay close attention to where and how Walled Gardens are being built, and to consider and discuss what that means for our society, and whether the greater public good would ultimately be best served by something akin to cyberspace zoning rules, or some other forms of government action. To borrow a famous phrase: “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”

Posted by Mitch Shapiro on January 10, 2006 3:36 PM to IP Democracy