Oct 17 - 46/45 - McCain +01
Barack's Myspace Controversy
Some guy named Joe Anthony in California started the official Barack Obama myspace page. Joe said he was a supporter of Obama and the page grew to 600,000 friends. The Obama campaign wanted to take over the page because it had grown so big and they wanted more control over the messages communicated through the site. Joe Anthony understood, but he wanted to charge the Obama Campaign $40,000 for his "work" developing the site. The Obama Campaign wasn't falling for the shakedown and the Myspace Company stepped in and gave Obama's Campaign the rights to his page and gave Joe Anthony the shared rights to the 600,000 contacts and no money. The story is detailed on CNN's blog.Joe Anthony said on his personal Myspace page last night that Obama personally called him to discuss the matter. Despite a personal call from Obama, Antony maintains that "What they did was wrong, no doubt about it. I just want to find my way forward." Let me just say that Joe Anthony is an idiot asking for $40K. Some people argue that the Obama campaign muscled this kid. Joe Anthony works as a paralegal and I bet he is thinking about suing Myspace and the Obama campaign. I hope this guy lets his ego get the best of him and decides to go on a national show to discuss the injustice committed against him. $40,000?!?!
By Kyle - 5/03/2007
21 Comments:
I hope whoever runs the Ron's Dad Myspace page takes note of this and is careful.
i think he is entilted to something...Obama probably thought he would be so overwhelmed with excitement when he called him that he would get whatever he wants.
i saw rons dad mowing his lawn yesterday
I think he should get something. a few thousand, perhaps.
but i can see this campaign or any wanting control of the myspace site...it would just take one person that is a "friend" to do something stupid and make a big deal that has negative publicity that has nothing to do with the actual campaign
I think this guy should get something for sure. I am pretty mad at Obama (and his campaign) for doing such a thing. I am not saying that Obama did not deserve to have that URL, but you can not just take it and say too bad. This guy did a lot of work in 2 and a half years.
I think it would have been smart if he asked for $6,000 - 1 cent for every contact. I question whether he deserves anything because it wasn't something he was asked to do. It would be like The Chief Source going to the Obama Campaign and charging an advertising fee after the 08' election when analysts credit our banner for being the difference maker.
This case sets an interesting precedent for Myspace. In fairness to Joe Anthony, apparently someone from the Obama campaign asked him to name his price and he did. Poor negotiating skills my Obama's staff.
Does anyone think Joe Anthony would have a chance in a lawsuit?
The thing I find most interesting about this is that he was willing to do the page for free, as a "supporter." But, then, after Obama's campaign steps in, he wants to take 40K away from his campaign?
exactly.
Suppose the Obama campaign decided to take control of Chief Source blog by going over your head to Blogger in order to shut you and all other front pagers/administrators out. That means complete loss of control to have any impact regarding the content and administration of this successful blog.
With this in mind, I ask... How much is the time and energy of everyone who contributed to build this Chief Source blog worth??
Read the whole story below, including the comments, instead of blindly accepting the action by the Obama campaign to institute message control. Remember that Obama "lost 91 percent" of his MySpace "friends" after bullying the page's originator out of what was rightfully his MySpace creation.
The Battle to Control Obama's Myspace
By Micah L. Sifry
05/01/2007
http://techpresident.com/node/301
There is no way this story hurts Obama. Obama is entitled to the site. The myspacers need to get over it.
Dan is right. How does that guy deserve anything for impersonating someone? He thinks he should get $$$ just because Obama's campaign is "able" to pay him for it.
If someone made a myspace page about me and I asked them to take it down, do I have to pay them to get my name back?
He should get something. He CREATED the site. You can't just take away his site. Maybe make him get rid of the "official" in the title. Whatever happened to you guys sticking up for the little guy. Plus, if this was a proper site that wasn't degrading in any way, I think the Obama campaign has no right. Now don't get me wrong, $40,000 is ludicrous, but it is HIS site. He can ask for a million if he wants. You can't force me to sell something and then dictate how much I have to sell it for.
I wonder what you guys would think if Dick Chaney did this. "Fascist Chaney Stealing Myspace pages!!" the headlines would probably read.
To summarize Terra
"How does that guy deserve anything for impersonating someone?" Just who is he impersonating? I don't think he says, 'I am Barack Obama and I want to be your next president.'
"He thinks he should get $$$ just because Obama's campaign is "able" to pay him for it." Ummm no. He thinks he should get money because he created the site. Stick to the facts.
"If someone made a myspace page about me and I asked them to take it down, do I have to pay them to get my name back?" WHAT!!???! They FORCED him to take it down. What don't you get about it? Your analogy is so far off that I almost thought Menchen wrote it.
Last I checked, Campaign Managers were paid a handsome salary for being supporters.
If anything, Obama's campaign manager should see that this guy is helping to secure him a demographic that could help him win the election. I don't see how it would be implausible to give the guy some cash for his efforts. He basically helped to bring votes to Obama's campaign that otherwise may have been lost. We haven't read anything about how Obama's campaign manager has helped secure the youth vote through MySpace. We have only heard about them assuming some other gentleman's hard work.
Kyle-
As far as I can tell, this isn't much different from anyone who goes out and buys thedomain name for or creates a site such as "howardstern.com", which howard had to pay a pretty fair sum of money to buy the rights to. The only difference is that myspace has different user rights so they took the site away from the guy and gave it to Obama's actual campaign. The guy probably couldn't win a law suit in court because of the myspace user agreement. He did develop a proprietary product and do Obama's campaign a great service, and for that and the time he invested he probably does deserve a healthy sum of money. You can argue how much that sum should be, but it is pretty scummy for the campaign to just take it over and offer the guy no compensation.
You would probably be viewing things a lot differently if myspace had just flat out taken the profile down because they didn't want people to support Obama. What they did is essentially the same because they took control away from the site creator w/o his endorsement.
This most certainly won't hurt Barry in the long run, but it does adversely affect my own personal opinion of him, for what it is worth.
When you sign up for myspace it is in the user agreement that you won't impersonate someone else. The guy deserves nothing.
If I start a profile for the Beatles and put up their songs I shouldn't get money for breaking the law and the user agreement.
If the guy didn't put up propriatery information of the Obama campaign then he didn't break the law. Directly profitting off of someone else's image, name, or proprietary property is different from what this guy did, so don't try to twist it or misinterpret what is going on.
As I said, his claim falls apart because of the user agreement, but that doesn't mean that the Barry for prez campaign should just inheret the site free of charge. If anything, the site should have just been disolved all together w/o transferring it to the campaign and as such transferring the contact info.
I said in the case of the Beatles it would be agianst the law. I was just making a point.
And I assume the reason that they turned the site over to Obama instead of just getting rid of it is because the url. The guy probably had myspace.com/barackobama. I'm in a band and I would be pissed if someone else had myspace.com/thestrangedivision.
I'm mostly upset at myspace for not sticking up for one of its users.
But Obamam loses points for not giving this guy any compensation.
The man doesn't stand a chance in a lawsuit. His site is owned by myspace, it isn't his in the first place.
I don't get you guys. Have you ever used myspace? Its not like making a myspace profile is some kind of hard job. Also, people became his friend because they thought it was Obama - he didn't do any work - just approved the friend invites.
I'm not saying this guy should be burned at the stake, but Obama and myspace aren't bad for taking it away, and he certainly doesn't deserve any money.
Tim-
People do the exact same thing when they register a domain name of a famous person and then sell the site to the person.
The site was his, as owned by myspace, as such, the friends, or contacts, were hsi as well. Intent doesn't matter. He can't make a claim to sue the campaign but I think he could definitely push to just have the profile deleted, though at this point it is moot.
I think that it certainly would have been a nice gesture for the Obama campaign team to compensate him for his valiant effort, but the bottom line is he is a supporter of Obama, if you are a supporter, sometimes there are things that a citizen does ie, donating time, or money to a political campaign. The problem is Americans are always throwing out their palms, expecting compensation for any little thing they do. What happened with just doing something because you just believe in it?
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