July 15, 2006 12:00 PM PDT

Murdoch taking MySpace down the tubes

Most of us bore witness this week to a rickety, nonsensical politician explaining to Congress how the InterWeb is a series of "tubes." Unfortunately, dear Senator Stevens is a key decision maker on Net neutrality, and has what one blogger called a "Flintstonian" understanding of the Internet.

The silliness escalated when a MySpacer let us listen to the Stevens ramblings again, this time in B minor with a backbeat. But media king Rupert Murdoch interrupted our uncomfortable laughter as the musical MySpacer's page was cancelled. Poof.

Enter some inquiry from a Web news reporter as to why the political parody-making MySpacer found himself now without a space, and the News Corp. flacks responded: The deletion was an inadvertent "error." Controlling information is a formidable goal, afterall, but even massive media conglomerates aren't always up to the task. The missing MySpace account was quickly reinstated. Unpoof.

Blog community response:

"You knew that Rupert Murdoch couldn't keep his reality-altering efforts off of MySpace...In this case, 'error' equals 'damage control.'"
--Daily Kos

"And that, my friends, is why I won't touch MySpace with a 10-foot pole. No matter how convenient it might be to have a MySpace (account), I simply am not going to support something that is owned by the people who own Fox News. Of course, since I buy gas, I suppose that is unavoidable."
--Chris Fairfield's Life...From Blammo!

"Frankly, though, it boggles the mind to think that of all the material posted on MySpace, one complaint against one semi-obscure song, is enough to get tossed off the site. It had to be more than a simple complaint filed by the complaint form on the site, because MySpace 'will not honor delete requests' sent with the form...Raff?s song apparently hit the wrong notes with someone."
--Public Knowledge

"Why Senator Steven's email took so long?I asked the Senator's office to send me a copy of the internet via Fed-Ex (to avoid internet rush hour). After signing for it this morning, I unwrapped it and set out to test it forensically to make sure the senator was telling the truth...(I used a command line tool called Bioforensic Unfragmenting Logistical Level Systemic Hopping Information Tracerouter, which is open-source.) Turns out he was right. After his staffers sent the internet letter and the letter shattered into pieces by the internal sledgehammer encased in the congressional mail server, the pieces were slingshotted into the internet's pipe. To visualize this, think of how a potato gun works and then simply reverse the process in your head."
--27B Stroke 6

Posted by Kari Dean McCarthy

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