News Corps illegally censors profiles on MySpace?

Posted by Jean Yves Chainon on November 9, 2006 at 12:52 PM

News Corp still struggles to integrate its main domain of expertise, news organizations, into its hit acquisition MySpace.com. However, the way it does so may turn out to be illegal.

Brad Greenspan, one of MySpace.com’s original founders, has filed a lawsuit against the website’s current owner, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. The allegations relate to illegal censorship of competitor services on the social networking website.

According to Greenspan, MySpace illegally censors the mention of rival websites (such as social networking Stickam.com and video sharing Vidilife.com) on its users’profiles.

Greenspan alleges YouTube suffered the same censoring treatment on MySpace until users ‘rebelled’ – despite initial complaints, mentions of lesser known brands like Vidilife and Stickam have remained censored.

"If News Corp is able to continue its censorship… it should surprise no one when News Corp deletes mentions of competitive news organizations to their own Fox News by preventing users from typing CNN.com or ABCNEWS.com in their Myspace blogs," Greenspan said in an interview.

The end results of this lawsuit could be representative of the amount of freedom – or of censorship – that News Corps will give to MySpace users in the future.

Source : The Sydney Morning Herald

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