CENSORSHIP ON MYSPACE

Just look at the success of Lily Allen, the Arctic Monkeys and wannabe chav mag tit flashes. MySpace is undoubtedly a useful tool for any budding musicians/artists/tarts to promote themselves, but what price are they paying for the convenience of a blog, a friends list and a slide show?

Recently I met a Canadian death-metal/trance/indie disco band called Kids on TV, who told me that they had their MySpace account deleted with no warning, and no explanation, other than a form letter reading as follows:

Your MySpace account has been deleted for violating our Terms of Service.
This is usually due to one of the following:
* Nude images, sexually suggestive or violent photos * Covering our banner ads with HTML * Harassing other users * You do not meet the minimum age requirement * Spamming the classifieds, forums, bulletins, or other sections of the site * Attempting to artificially inflate scores * Scripting the site
Your account cannot be restored. If you choose to return to MySpace, please follow the rules.

Kids on TV now run four different myspace pages in the fear of future deletion. Having to open a new account can mean breaking hyperlinks and losing friends/stalkers. While the band were unsure about why their account was deleted, they presumed it was due to the band being "thematically, visually, conceptually and politically homosexual."

KOTV found many other MySpace fags who shared their experience of unexplained deletion. Various MySpace censorship profiles & websites sprang up declaring Rupert Murdoch a homophobic media tyrant, and eventually the Kids on TV account was restored, still with no explanation or comment from MySpace.

Late last year, Associated Press revealed they were compiling a database of registered paedophiles in the USA, in order to create software which trawls myspace to locate and delete these profiles. Maybe some moderation is required on MySpace to prevent some paedomaniac from tracking down his next victim, but the internet is supposed to be a space where the conglomerates which control the rest of the mass media have equal footing with independent producers.

Most of the features used by people on MySpace are well within the realms of free beginners' web design. Before MySpace came along, kids used Geocities and other free hosts for their crappy band and fan sites, now Rupert Murdoch has financial and editorial control over those sites. Even those silly anti capitalist American punk bands have MySpace accounts, not because they want to be part of Murdoch's MySpace, or even necessarily because of the different messaging (or spamming) systems available on it, but because it is what everyone else uses.
We could all go and use Friendster, a similar social networking site which isn't owned by News Corp, to show Murdoch what we think of his virtual gay bashing. But the owners of Friendsters are bound to have financial interests at heart, and their own set of sensitive subject areas.

Of course, you have to wonder what degree of editorial control is really exercised on MySpace when a profile exists about Murdoch himself, noting how his newspapers "frequently contain cross promotions and endorsements of my other products and business interests".
MySpace.com/rupertmurdochmustdie wittily dubs him "Rupert Murdouche" while MySpace.com/murdrupert goes further :

"Tom is my face man, my gimp. Ever notice how slumpy he looks in his newest profile pic? That particular night, fresh out of his box I took off his mask, made love to his mouth before praying to the all seeing Eye of Magog. Satisfied by my extreme perversions, I popped a few more viagra and returned to my beautiful wife, Wendi. I gave her the business and jumped on myspace for about an hour."

So maybe everything is functioning as it should. As long as we can talk about Rupert Murdoch face fucking Tom Anderson (MySpace president) on their website, everything must be ok right?