NEWS / SERVICES

MySpace Sued For Mass Censorship

05 Nov, 2006, 5:00 pm IST | Priyanka Pradhan | Services

NewsCorp's Social networking site, MySpace.com, has been sued for blocking links and censoring the names of products and websites on profile pages of its users that NewsCorp deems to be competitive. Brad Greenspan, founder of LiveUniverse.com has filed a lawsuit against the social networking site for its 'mass censorship technique', which censors words such as rival social networking startup Stickam.com and vidiLife.com.

Greenspan, who is also a former co-founder of MySpace, said that NewsCorp is exercising aggressive censorship over 100 million MySpace users, which is an unfair and evil practice. He said that when he created MySpace along with the other co-founders, the social networking site was committed to protecting the rights of its users and respecting their right to express. However, News Corp's moves now destroy and limit the right to freedom of expression. He added that this mass censorship technique may assume larger proportions if left neglected. According to him, NewsCorp may soon start deleting mentions of competitive news organizations to their own Fox News by preventing users from typing CNN or ABCNEWS in their MySpace blogs.

The goal of the lawsuit, according to Greenspan, is to force NewsCorp and MySpace to agree to permanently end their current and growing practice of mass censorship on the MySpace service, as it infringes on its users' right to freedom of expression. He also announced the launch of a watch dog web site, CensorSpace.com, to monitor and expose censorship that compromises on people's rights. He also mentioned that he will pledge the financial awards that arise from this MySpace litigation to organizations that fight censorship online.

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Tags: social networking site , MySpace , LiveUniverse , stickham.com , vidilife.com , NewsCorp , MySpace blogs , CNN , ABCNEWS , CensorSpace.com

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