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Not a Pleo but Pretty Neato!

Not quite a Pleo but still pretty neato! I WANT ONE!

South African lizard - Cordylus cataphractus or the armadillo girdled lizard is endemic to the SW cape and live in colonies of up to 40 individuals. They are live bearing and the babies are perfect replicas of the adults. They bite on their tail and roll themselves into a ball when threatened. They also hide amongst rock crevices and inflate their bodies so they cant be removed. These animals are CITES protected as is most of South Africas reptile species.

pleo, south african lizard, reptile

MySpace Stole My Custom URL..

Wow... this is just unbelievable... A while back I noticed that the custom myspace.com URL that I selected a few years ago (3/26/05 - before News Corp bought them) was no longer associated with my myspace profile. I tried to contact myspace to see what was going on and to let them know that my custom URL was no longer associated with my account. I don't know if anyone else has ever tried to get a real human to talk to over at myspace but it's virtually (no pun intended) impossible. So like every other commoner out in the streets of the real world I tried to get a hold of them through their website messaging system only to be brushed off with what appeared to be computer generated responses to my concern.

So today I typed in my custom url again myspace.com/tickets and lo and behold looks like myspace has been trying to get into the ticket business since Jan. 2007 and they needed a good domain name to promote their new business endeavor.

So now what do I do? Well, I'm not sure yet. What would you do if myspace yanked your custom URL out from under you? Find the best IP attorney in America (Eben Moglen) to try and see if myspace has the legal right to take away, at will, anyone's custom URL linking to their profile whenever they see fit to do so? Or would you just let it go, forget about it and watch your internet asset become another revenue stream for Rupert Murdoch's empire?

First things first, I need to take a look at the TOS agreement that was in effect and the same one that I digitally signed back on 3/26/2005. It will probably require writing a letter to MySpace and hoping to have them voluntarily mail me a copy of this agreement.

By the way, just so you'll realize that there was value in the uniqueness of myspace.com/tickets I was actually approached by a ticket company owner in Austin, TX (via a myspace message) who wanted to purchase my myspace page on 5/02/07.

I responded to this person and let them know that I did not want to sell my myspace profile myspace.com/tickets (The URL is what he wanted) and that I had plans to keep using it as a promotional tool for local bands in Houston. I may post the emails of this correspondence to flickr in the future but have chosen to hold off until I seek legal counsel and explore my options.

When I chose the word "tickets" to be my custom URL I knew that it was a great name and could certainly help me to promote and get the word out about different local bands playing in the Houston area. I also knew that it inherently was a valuable domain/URL because I knew myspace was getting more popular and it was a new way to connect with people using the internet and that the concert and ticket industry was a multi-billion dollar per year industry as verified by Forbes.com in an 01/04/08 article titled "Another Record Year For The Concert Industry."

Anyway... this is just not cool and it needs to be contested but before I go to the extent to exert the time and energy and money into seeking legal counsel I'd like to hear back from the blogosphere and get your thoughts about what happened. I'm not trying to be a prick I just think it's unprofessional for a company to treat it's customers/users the way that myspace has decided to treat me so far in this matter. What's the point of selecting a custom URL with any social site, then building content around it, marketing the URL to drive visitors to it to just have them come and steal it away from you for no reason other than they want to have it. Not cool...

Anyway, any thoughts from anyone would be greatly appreciated. Oh and have you ever visited the domain: myspacesucks.com - pretty clever ducc.


Technorati Tags: myspace, stole my URL, domain name theft, myspace sucks, Ewen Moglen, intellectual property, social networks, web 20, web 3.0, tickets, ticket business, the future, domain names, theft, Tom, whatever, lawsuit, middlefingermedia.com