Bill Collectors Targeting Kids' Social Networking Profiles?

from the getting-a-bit-desperate,-eh? dept

We've discussed in the past attempts to serve court documents via Facebook, but apparently others are making use of such tactics as well. A few people alerted us to the story of a bill collector, apparently hired by JPMorgan Chase, who supposedly tracked down the MySpace account of the daughter of someone who was behind on some car loan payments, and posted the debt collection notice on the kids' MySpace page. In the past, people would stop answering the phone or the doorbell to avoid debt collectors. Will they start locking down their social networking profiles as well?

Filed Under: bill collectors, debt collectors, social networks
Companies: jpmorgan, myspace

So Much For MySpace Music Revolutionizing The Business

from the it's-what-now? dept

Last year, we found it amusing that some in the press were claiming that MySpace Music was going to be "the most significant rollout of a digital-music service since Apple's iTunes." As we noted at the time, the whole concept behind MySpace Music seemed destined to fail, because no one seemed willing to admit that they had to compete with piracy. So rather than design a better product, they made yet another totally lame "official" online music service. And, like pretty much every other such service, users have almost entirely ignored it. Even the folks running MySpace Music are now admitting that the product sucks:

"It was plumbing and a playlist. But it wasn't overly social, it wasn't deep enough, and we didn't really empower the users to do what they wanted to do."

That's from Courtney Holt -- the guy who's now in charge, but who wasn't hired until after the launch. But, of course, the company has already blown the ability to get a lot of attention with a big launch. It totally overplayed that hand (though, many mainstream reporters bought into the hype totally). While Holt has plans for a total redo of the service, it's going to become increasingly difficult to dig themselves out of the ditch from being "the most significant rollout of digital-music service" that almost no one cared about.

Filed Under: myspace music, record labels
Companies: myspace, myspace music

Musician Called A Copyright Violator On MySpace For Uploading Her Own Music

from the hurray-for-copyright dept

The various record labels have pushed sites like MySpace to institute aggressive filters to try to stomp out the ability of people to upload others' music -- but as with any such filters, they seem to make mistakes that aren't easily fixed. Reader Ken Blake points us to the news that indie musician Emily Bezar had her account flagged as a copyright violator after she tried to upload five or six songs from her own self-produced CD. She's emailed MySpace's support email... and seems to have heard absolutely nothing back weeks later. But, no, overly aggressive copyright enforcement doesn't hurt anyone, right?

Filed Under: copyright, emily bezar, music, uploads
Companies: myspace

What Happens Once MySpace's Deal With Google Ends?

from the then-what? dept

You may recall, that a few years ago, MySpace (or, rather, News Corp.) signed a $900 million advertising deal with Google. The deal guaranteed at least that much in revenue from Google, even if the ads didn't really earn that much. Basically, Google felt the need to do the deal to keep competitors off of MySpace. However, as people have finally started realizing that advertising on MySpace (or other social networks) isn't working out, it's worth noting that the clock is ticking on the deal. There's still a bit more than a year left on the deal, but Google has been shying away from similar deals, and there's growing evidence that ads on social networking sites just don't pay. The Google deal may have helped keep MySpace afloat for the past few years, but without a replacement things may get trickier.

Filed Under: ads, revenue, social networks
Companies: google, myspace

Happy Birthday Facebook, Now Show Us The Revenues

from the maybe-they-got-some-birthday-money-they-can-use dept

Facebook celebrated its fifth birthday this week, and amid all the navel-gazing about what that means for the internet, one big question still hangs over the site: how will it monetize its popularity? This is an issue that continues to dog the social-networking space, as Om Malik points out that MySpace is struggling to generate revenues as well. These sites' massive amount of traffic and visitors, and the huge amount of time spent there, have traditionally not automatically equated to big advertising revenue, and there's nothing to suggest that's going to change soon, particularly given the slowdown in ad spending. If these sites are depending on advertising for revenues, they've got to come up with something more compelling than simple banner ads, which aren't delivering decent CPM or clickthroughs. While sites like Facebook and MySpace have plenty of life left in them, at some point, they're going to have to deliver an effective way to generate significant revenues.

Filed Under: ads, revenue, social networks
Companies: facebook, myspace

Connecticut AG Upset That MySpace's Sex Offender Tracking (Which He Asked For) Works

from the logic-not-required dept

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has been at the forefront of the crusade to "protect the children" by blaming social networks for exposing them to sexual predators. This has largely entailed strong-arming the networks into doing all sorts of largely ineffective things that make for good political grandstanding. For some time, MySpace has been making moves to appease politicians, presumably thinking that it's better for it to take some action to try and keep them off of its back. It's put in place a system to identify sex offenders that have profiles on the site, using government sex offender databases, to track them down and kick them off. Blumenthal's latest stunt was to demand MySpace and Facebook hand over info on how many sex offenders they'd discovered on their sites; MySpace has obliged, revealing that it's identified 90,000 sex offenders on its site. So, you'd think Blumenthal would be thrilled to have some "proof" that the systems he pushed MySpace to put into place are working, that they'd blocked 90,000 would-be predators from contacting kids through the site. You'd be wrong.

Blumenthal instead says the figure "provides compelling proof" that refutes the study that came out a few weeks back -- the study commissioned by Blumenthal and 48 other state attorneys general -- which downplayed the sexual-predator threat social networks posed to children, like other research before it. So because the system he pushed MySpace to put into place is able to identify registered sex offenders, it supposedly proves that this is a real problem, one that he isn't blowing out of proportion, and that MySpace has "monstrously inadequate counter-measures." While we'd argue that most any counter-measure MySpace uses would be inadequate at stopping sexual abuse (because they're fighting a problem that likely isn't that big), it makes little sense why Blumenthal sees MySpace's success at identifying sex offenders in its system, just like he wanted, as a bad thing. It's really hard for MySpace to fight a problem that isn't there, but that doesn't fit Blumenthal's political version of reality.

Filed Under: richard blumenthal, sex offenders, social networks
Companies: myspace

Raising Some Questions About Smoking Gun Sex Offender Profiles On MySpace

from the anyone-check-if-it's-actually-real? dept

Last week, there was a story on News.com about how Connecticut's Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal, who's been on quite a crusade to "protect the children" from social networks, was demanding MySpace hand over info on sex offenders registered on the site. This seemed a bit odd, because MySpace and other social networks had already agreed to weed out the accounts of various sex offenders. Yet, as the article noted, an investigator (who was involved in a separate legal battle with MySpace) happened to find profiles of registered sex offenders still on MySpace including (gasp!) some who even used their own mug shots as their photos. Yet, as Sean Garrett points out, the whole thing seems pretty questionable. Why would a sex offender trolling the site for kids use their own mugshot -- and equally creepy descriptions that are pretty clear tipoffs. The whole thing seems quite likely that someone found the sex offender page and set up a fake MySpace profile.

Of course, it's possible the page was actually put together by the sex offender in question, but it doesn't look like anyone actually bothered to confirm that it's real. Instead, it's being used as a political prop by politicians and reporters of the horrible type of people found on MySpace. As Jim Harper notes, will Richard Blumenthal be investigating the reincarnation of Elvis Presley on Facebook next?

No one's trying to downplay the serious issue of sexual predators, but study after study after study has shown that the issue has been blown way out of proportion by politicians and the press who seem to love creating moral panics so they can claim they're "protecting the children." It's as if they stop thinking and all skepticism goes out the window the second anyone claims that sexual predators might be on social networks -- despite the fact that studies have shown the best way to combat the rare cases when children are approached by such miscreants is better education. Children who are educated on the risks are quite good at avoiding such contact. Yet, that doesn't make for such great headlines and probably doesn't help Attorneys General when it comes to re-election time.

Filed Under: richard blumenthal, sex offenders, social networks
Companies: myspace

MySpace Video Blocking Not An Antitrust Violation

from the well,-good dept

Brad Greenspan, who at one point was CEO of Intermix, the spyware/adware firm that originally created MySpace, has been complaining for years that News Corp. engaged in fraud when it purchased Intermix in order to get MySpace at a discounted price. A court found nothing to support this, pointing out (yet again) that the acquisition was agreed to by both parties. However, that hasn't stopped Greenspan, whose own competitive startup Live Universe filed an antitrust lawsuit against MySpace for blocking Live Universe videos from MySpace profiles.

How is this possibly an antitrust issue? Well, that wasn't clear to anyone... least of all to the courts apparently. After first losing at the district court level, an appeals court has now found no validity in the antitrust claims either, sending Greenspan back to the drawing board for attempts to find ways to suck some more money out of News Corp.

Filed Under: antitrust, brad greenspan, videos
Companies: live universe, myspace, news corp

Facebook Gives In, Cuts Off Project Playlist For No Legal Reason

from the safe-harbors,-people... dept

Earlier this week, we discussed how MySpace had blocked Project Playlist's widgets in response to record label complaints (and, of course, its own desire to have a competitor to its MySpace Music offering locked out) while Facebook left it up. We were surprised to see some claim that Facebook was being "irresponsible" here, because Facebook has a pretty strong legal defense. Of course, it's probably a legal battle that Facebook doesn't want to be involved in, so the company has now followed suit and disabled the Project Playlist app, claiming it violated Facebook's terms of service.

This is yet another example of the recording industry's effort to use chilling effects to get its way, such as by going after third parties to do its dirty work. Third party service providers, such as both MySpace and Facebook, have clear liability protection thanks to the DMCA's safe harbors. Yes, the record labels are in a legal battle with Project Playlist -- but that's between the labels and Project Playlist (and most agree that it's really the record labels using litigation for "negotiating" purposes, rather than based on any strong legal backing). It's not surprising that MySpace of Facebook caved -- why should they fight someone else's legal battle -- but it highlights the problems of when companies like the major record labels are allowed to go after third parties. Those third parties will often fold, because they don't have the incentives to fight. It's an abuse of the law to get others to do the RIAA's unsavory business.

And, in the long run, it's only going to hurt both MySpace and Facebook. If I were a developer for either platform, knowing that they would fold like a cheap card table as soon as some bigger company shows up with a bogus legal claim, I'd focus my development efforts elsewhere. Either MySpace or Facebook could have taken a stand, knowing that any lawsuit would likely get tossed after a quick safe harbor review, and developers would have known that those platforms were safe places for developers. Now... it's probably time to look elsewhere.

Filed Under: chilling effects, mixtapes
Companies: facebook, myspace, project playlist, riaa

Record Labels Continue To Go After Music Startups

from the onwards-and-downwards dept

On Friday, we wrote about how the likelihood of eventual lawsuits created a chilling effect that shut down Mixwit, a useful online mixtape service provider. It seemed quite unlikely that Mixwit was violating copyrights, as it didn't host any music nor make the music that people played through available for download. However, that won't stop the record labels who seem to believe that any service that lets you play music must first receive the big record labels' blessing (and, in case you were wondering, that blessing costs a lot of money, and often equity).

Earlier this year they sued one such startup, called Project Playlist. Similar to Mixwit, Project Playlist doesn't host any music. It just sends a search query to a variety of search engines, finds results of publicly available music via those search engines and then aggregates the results into a playlist. It then allows you to create widgets with that playlist. All of this should be perfectly legal. Project Playlist simply has no way of knowing whether the music found via various search engines is legal or not. It's not doing any of the hosting. It's not allowing downloading for infringement purposes. It's difficult to see what possible complaint the record labels have with it, other than the simple fact that it's a good innovation that people like, and no one's paying the big record labels for it.

Of course, lawsuits take some time, and apparently (unlike some other startups) Project Playlist hasn't simply folded when the lawsuits showed up. The company, which has raised a significant amount of money and has brought on experienced internet execs seems to be fighting back. So what did the record labels do? Well, they went after third parties, such as MySpace and Facebook who host the widget from Project Playlist. This is even more untenable than the lawsuit against Project Playlist. MySpace and Facebook are even further away from any liability, because as open application platforms, they don't even know much of what their applications do, let alone that one may be going to search engines, finding publicly available songs, putting them into a playlist and letting people stream them.

But, why should anything like that stop the record labels? So, late last week, MySpace gave in and locked out Project Playlist widgets while Facebook seems willing to push back on behalf of users. MySpace's move really isn't that surprising, since MySpace launched its MySpace Music offering to terrible reviews and (from the buzz we've heard from insiders) much less use than projected. MySpace Music competes directly with Project Playlist, so the company must be thrilled about an excuse to shut down access to Project Playlist, even though the end result might just drive users away, and make app developers that much more cautious about betting on MySpace as a platform.

Apparently, record label folks are claiming that Facebook's refusal to block Project Playlist is "irresponsible," which is laughable coming from the recording industry -- perhaps the most irresponsible and short-sighted industry around. Facebook knows that it has the law on its side, and at best the recording industry can launch a wasteful, money-sucking lawsuit against it, which will only drive music fans further away from the recording industry. If the record labels want to talk "irresponsible" they should look at themselves in the mirror first.

Update: Interesting timing here. Apparently Sony BMG has worked out a deal with Project Playlist. While News.com designates this as "good news," I'm not so sure. Yes, it's probably good news from the standpoint of avoiding a lawsuit, but it's bad news from the standpoint that Project Playlist was pressured into signing a deal that legally it almost certainly does not need. It's now set a precedent that rather than stand up for its rights, if you threaten enough, the company will fork over money (and potentially equity). Once again, this just reinforces the record labels' incorrect position that no one should be allowed to innovate in the music space without paying a toll to the big record labels.

Filed Under: copyright, playlists, takedown, widget
Companies: facebook, myspace, project playlist, riaa