TechPresident: The Battle to Control Obama's Myspace

Excerpt:
"Whatever the case, at this point it appears the Obama people simply decided that they would get control of the myspace.com/barackobama url by going around Anthony and getting MySpace to lock down his access to it. In their view, Anthony was violating MySpace's terms of service by falsely representing himself as Obama, and thus they didn't have to pay him anything. The worst that would happen, they reasoned, is that they would have to rebuild the candidate's network of friends.

And this is indeed what is happening now. At the request of the Obama campaign, the url myspace.com/barackobama has been taken away from Joe Anthony and put in their hands."

Alex: Well written article. Not knowing the facts of the case myself, it also appears from first reading to be not only detailed but a really strong attempt to be balanced. The relationship between campaigns, unaffiliated (or loosely affiliated) new media volunteers or professionals and citizens is, obviously, still being worked out, and there continue to be bumps in the road. I don't like to make conclusions until more information is out generally, but my initial impression is that the Obama camp could well have done a lot more for this individual, and should have. And maybe this is a question for the lawyers (I'm not one), but the question also arises, what are MySpace's responsibilities? I'd definately like to see that addressed in more detail.

http://www.techpresident.com/node/301

Alex

Sphere: Related Content