MySpace or yours? Or ... theirs?

A real-world friend (well, truth be told he's more a friend of my brother, but that's by the by) recently sent me a link to his MySpace page.

Now, I don't know much about MySpace. I read bits of a Vanity Fair article about it a few months ago, and about the same time I also read about it in Kerrang! magazine. The latter made it sound quite cool; the former made it sound a bit like a place for getting laid.

Anyway, a few days ago, I decided to take five minutes to set up a MySpace account. I didn't know why then, and I still don't know why now. Wife, who had read more of that VF article than I had, took this as a sign that I was looking to get laid by all and sundry. As many of you know, she is Italian, and those Italians have that passion-and-jealousy thing going on, and I don't mind that. Mind you, she thought the same thing when I started blogging, but now watch her go! She sees that it's just good fun and a bit creative, too. I just hope the missus doesn't end up thinking like Fall Out Boy: "I liked you a lot better before you became a MySpace whore".

Anyway...

So I set up my profile and put a little linky thing to this blog. At the very least maybe I'll pick up a bit more traffic, right? And people use it to stick their music up and get people hearing it, and since I've got a wealth of my own recordings gathering dust here, I thought I could - maybe - put some of those on my MySpace space.

But then my NUJ magazine and Freelance newsletter dropped through my letterbox. Wife looked at it first. Then she said, "If you're considering putting music on MySpace, you probably ought to read this first."

So I did. I don't even know quite what to make of it all, but it doesn't seem good. Whatever, I just thought I'd share, because clearly there are some dodgy copyright and ownership issues that people ought to be aware of. Click here to see what I read. Essentially, anything on MySpace is fair game for the owners of MySpace to sell on to third parties. As a user of MySpace, you grant them licence to do whatever they want with your work. Scary.

UPDATE: MySpace has changed its terms and conditions, seemingly in part due to pressure from Billy Bragg, hero that he is. The revised contract includes the following words: "MySpace.com does not claim any ownership rights in the text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, musical works, works of authorship, or any other materials (collectively, 'Content') that you post to the MySpace Services. After posting your Content to the MySpace Services, you continue to retain all ownership rights in such Content, and you continue to have the right to use your Content in any way you choose." Bravo, Billy Bragg!