LRHB Industries Dept. of Public Records

Yes, they’re allowed to do whatever they want with whatever you post on their site, but I just wanted to call to light a little bit of censorship I experienced first hand.

Friends have been posting things about third-party trackers, like the one Friendster has built in. Someone comes to your page, you’ll know it (unless they set themself to Private or what have you). I don’t know why Myspace doesn’t just add this functionality, because obviously people want it… but that’s ok, I understand they’re busy people!

So anyhow, I tested out the latest and greatest which didn’t actually work, and while I was posting a bulletin to let my friends know not to waste their time, I decided I’d add a bit about AIM Pages and AOL’s new VoIP offerings while I was at it.

A day goes by, and I log in, and mysteriously, my bulletin is gone! I thought maybe I hadn’t posted it somehow… but after a quick follow up post wondering where it went, a few friends wrote me and told me they’d seen it before Myspace had removed it.

All that was in the post was information on new AOL services as well as snippets from an article from USA Today. Apparently this was enough of a threat for Myspace to remove it. According to their terms, “MySpace.com may delete any Content that in the sole judgment of MySpace.com violates this Agreement or which may be offensive, illegal or violate the rights, harm, or threaten the safety of any person.”

Reading through their terms of service, they really had no ground to remove my post other than, “This is Myspace and we can do what we want”, which is fine. Just something to point out for those who forget that “by displaying or publishing (”posting”) any Content, messages, text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, profiles, works of authorship, or any other materials (collectively, “Content”) on or through the Services, you hereby grant to MySpace.com, a non-exclusive, fully-paid and royalty-free, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense through unlimited levels of sublicensees) to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, publicly display, store, reproduce, transmit, and distribute such Content on and through the Services.”

Your art, your music, your pictures, and your posts… all your contents are belong to Myspace.

More on AOL’s myspace killer:
Tech Crunch
CNN

And AOL’s VoIP services:
USA Today