News April 11, 2006
MySpace.com has garnered a lot of attention lately as the 70 million member website became teen phenom.
Though the loyal membership was richly concerned with the News Corp. buyout, many have noted that Intermix Media had cloudy
and questionable history.
Editor's Note:
Was MySpace undervalued when it was sold to News Corp. for $580 million? MySpace competitor Facebook recently asked
Viacom for $2 billion, but doesn't have quite the success story. Sound off about this question or start your own topic at
SyndicationPro.
 This
is Part 2 of a two-part series. For Part 1
click
here.
It may have
never occurred to the charter members of MySpace, that being run by a media juggernaut like News Corp. would be a
positive.
Perhaps coinciding with News Corp.'s purchase of Intermix (the reference here posts these two happenings on the same day),
the MySpace terms of use were conspicuously changed. The earlier version (i.e., pre-News Corp.) was much more exploitative of users.
By posting Content on any public area of MySpace.com, you automatically grant as well as represent and warrant that you have the
right to grant to MySpace.com… an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, fully paid, worldwide license to use, copy,
perform, display, and distribute such information and content to MySpace.com. MySpace.com has the right to prepare
derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such information and content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of
the foregoing.
It was changed, according to the
source, to the following:
By posting any Content to the public areas of the Website, you hereby grant to MySpace.com the non-exclusive, fully paid,
worldwide license to use, publicly perform and display such Content on the Website. This license will terminate at the time you
remove such Content from the Website.
Dudeck was quick to distance MySpace.com from any association from Intermix Media, Inc., calling the operations "very
separate," and with good reason. News Corp. is not Intermix, and one may assume, from News Corp.'s perspective, MySpace is also
not Intermix.
Our journey begins with
Trent Lapinski, now CEO of AppleXnet.com, and then a young journalist who claimed, that after researching a "web of
controversy" surrounding the founders of MySpace.com, specifically MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe, he was sent a letter from their
legal team threatening to sue him if the article
was published.
"He was accusing MySpace of criminal behavior. He was warned that printing mistruths could make him liable for
defamation," said Dudeck, who was not with MySpace at the time of the alleged incident.
In response, Lapinski told WebProNews that he hadn't made any accusations toward DeWolfe specifically, but had questioned the
activities of executives in connection with DeWolfe.
These activities of his associates involve banking scandals, spyware and adware, and spamming. The allegations are almost "guilt
by association" in nature, and included a link of MySpace executives with supplying adware to file-sharing network Kazaa.
Dudeck disputes this claim. "We absolutely do not distribute spyware," she said, "nor
does MySpace or its founders have any connection to Kazaa."
The first part is certainly true. The second part, though, is only technically true. Again, it is a matter of those associated
with the founders, and more specifically Intermix Media, Inc.
Intermix Media was formerly eUniverse.com, a company that changed its name after authoring a
threat advisory about its own adware that secretly installed itself onto user computers via free downloadable screen
savers, online games and others. And, from the threat advisory:
The EUniverse.PerfectNav variant is bundled with the Free Ad Supported version of Kazaa Media Desktop 2.6. and also likely
to be found in software supplied by eUniverse sites, such as thunderdownloads.com, myfreecursors.com, cursorzone.com and
mycoolscreen.com.
About a year ago, New York Attorney General
sued Intermix Media, alleging that the firm was the source of spyware and adware secretly installed on millions of home
computers. Intermix settled out of court for $7.9 million.
But before the suit, there was an investigation, according to Intermix founder and largest shareholder Brad Greenspan, who
left the company in 2003.
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About the Author:
Jason is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. |
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