posted by David May 03rd, 2007.2 Comments
It's almost a joke, a MySpace profile influencing a presidential campaign. However, it is no joke and Barrack Obama is taking his name and profile back on MySpace. Not that it was ever stolen, the person who maintained the profile worked for Obama's presidential campaign.
Recently the profile exploded with page views and popularity as the friends list vaulted over 160,000. Obama, whom feared that if anyone else controlled the profile, a misrepresentation of his platform or worse would happen. So, did Obama lose a vote because of his bullying?
Anthony wrote on his MySpace blog that he was heartbroken that the Obama campaign was "bullying" him out of the page he built. He initially said the candidate lost his vote, but Obama may have begun to win it back after a Wednesday evening phone call that Anthony called a great honor. Anthony said he was so nervous that he doesn't remember exactly what Obama said, but the candidate expressed his appreciation and they agreed everyone learned a lesson in this case.
As a potential future leader to our country, doesn't he have better things to be worried about? I suppose if he ever does become president he will want to control what Digg Users have to say.
#2 cldnails - 04 May, 7:01 PM
In my opinion I don’t think bullying is an answer to any dispute. Rather than ‘assume’ control over a site which had a lot of hard work put into it, they should have just closed it down. Alternatively, a fair market value for the site should have been paid.
Being cheated out of your hard work does not sound fair to me. Personally, I’m on the fence on how I feel about Cyber Squatting. BTW it is not always illegal when done in the right context, personally, I’ve done it successfully in the past.
#1 DragonFlyEye - 04 May, 4:18 PM
I’d be the first to point out that powerful Congressmen and Senators bullying lowly MySpacers is a cheap trick, but let’s not forget: the kid wanted $40,000 for his site! In any other context, that would be considered squatting, which is illegal for a domain name. There’s no reason to think that the same rules shouldn’t apply to MySpace accounts.
And if 160,000 people frequented a website that said it was you, you’d probably want to control what gets said on it, I’m thinking.