Myspace Will Censor You

digitalfilmmaker — Fri, 2 Feb 2007 21:32:37 -0600

Let me start off by saying we love all of our friends and fans that we've made through Myspace.

But sometimes Myspace the company does some gross stuff that violates the spirit it was created under and the values of the Internet itself.

Over the last few months there has been a lot of debate over Net Neutrality, which basically boils down to one company blocking access to to another companies servers in order to gain a business advantage. This debate has usually focused on the companies that charge for bandwidth like AT&T, but recently Myspace has pioneered a new form -- blocking sites that users link to in their bulletins and profiles.

Right now if you link to anything at a site like "http://revver . com" (remove the spaces) Myspace will delete the link. Try it. That sucks right?

Revver is not the only site. There are dozens of smaller video and photo sharing sites that they are doing this to.

Why should you care?

Ask A Ninja was created because we were in control of where we posted the videos. That's a big deal because if we're forced to put them on MySpace video then FOX could take the episodes and make money off of them without paying Douglas or me anything. Which isn't fair and takes away the incentive to create cool shows for you to watch.

Why is this against Net Neutrality? Because videos from Myspace Video and Youtube are not effected. It's only these smaller, more innovative companies that haven't been sold for billions of dollars.

Here's what you can do:

Copy this bulletin. Repost it. Blog about it. Make Tom put up a little fix it bulletin saying he's sorry.

Once you've reposted this, send a message to Tom (http://myspace.com/tomanderson) like this (or even better, write your own):

I'm sending this message to request that MySpace stop blocking videos from sites like Revver. Choosing the video-sharing service that is right for me is very important and is why you built Myspace. What I like most about MySpace is that I can generally do what I want here. I like that Myspace is a relatively open platform where I can communicate with my friends (and promote my stuff) in all sorts of ways. I feel good about sharing videos from Revver because I know they respect copyright and look out for independent artists. Please bring back Revver!

UPDATE:

Digg this here

And that's the address for Tom's personal profile.

Ask A Ninja - myspace

Myspace Will Censor You