July 29, 2007
(Temporarily) Banned from MySpace?
On late Thursday night or early Friday morning (Pacific time—here in the wasteland, it happened around eight in the morning), we were banned from MySpace. I suppose it happens to everyone, but not everyone is Abysmal Crucifix.
At first, I really didn’t know what caused it. I received an automated message from MySpace:
Hello,
MySpace has deleted your profile because we received a credible complaint of your violation of the MySpace Terms of Services.
Prohibited activity includes, but is not limited to:
-Any automated use of the system, such as using scripts and/or bots to add friends, send messages, etc.
-For band and filmmaker profiles, MySpace prohibits sexually suggestive imagery or any other unfair, misleading or deceptive content intended to draw traffic to the profile.
-MySpace also investigates credible complaints of copyright/trademark infringement and will delete any materials that infringe upon the intellectual property rights of third parties.
For a more thorough list of prohibited content/activity, please refer to the MySpace Terms of Service located at the bottom of MySpace.com.
If we delete your account, it cannot be reinstated.
Thank you,
MySpace.com
I thought, “This must be some kind of a mistake, or perhaps it’s spam.” While replying with my credit card information and Social Security number, I thought, Maybe I should login and check to be sure. I tried to login, and it let me—sort of. It said I was logged in, but refused to take me “Home.” I decided to go to the link to our profile—and it was gone, replaced with a generic message telling me I’d either typed an invalid ID or the profile was deleted.
“Noooooo!” I roared, then quieted down so as not to wake the others. I had snuck onto the computer intentionally for—personal use, let’s say.
I couldn’t explain it. We are mocked by other bands for “hiring” an unpaid intern whose sole duty in life is to sit on MySpace adding friends for us. He hand-picks every single friend we send a request to and maintains every aspect of our MySpace page with the exception of sending messages and writing comments. Obviously, this cleared the “automated use” excuse for our profile’s deletion.
Sexually suggestive imagery or any other unfair, misleading or deceptive content intended to draw traffic to the profile? I listened to the songs on our profile, I looked at everything—our headline, our “About Us,” our influences, our comments—and couldn’t find a thing wrong. All we had was great music and the map of Scandinavia Little Riffs Nicky drew.
What is sexually suggestive about a map? Answer me that.
Credible complaints of copyright/trademark infringement? Everything on our page, with the exception of comments from friends and well-wishers, is 100% Abysmal.
I could see no reason why MySpace would object to this, so from my personal account (hidden from the prying eyes of the MySpace masses) I sent a message directly to Tom Anderson, founder of MySpace.
Dear sirs:
We would like you to explain specifically why our profile was banned. Our profile contains no sexually suggestive IMAGERY—in point of fact, the only images you will find are album covers, t-shirts, and a map—none of which are sexually suggestive in the least.
Perhaps you take issue with our brilliant song lyrics, which we openly admit are sexually suggestive. Is this a violation of your terms of service? If so, we have not been made aware of this. We find masking our lyrics in a shroud of innocence to be more “unfair, misleading [and] deceptive” than letting them all hang out like so many huge and throbbing johnsons.
Though we are currently in Europe, away from unimportant American news like “MySpace cracks down on sexual predators,” our publicist Lacey Greenwood has informed us of the current situation and suggested that, perhaps, you have confused us for the deviants and child rapists plaguing your website. Our music is not targeted at children, not in the slightest, and our band has condoned rape only occasionally—but never with regards to children!
I hope you will accept our plea to reinstate our MySpace profile, despite your message that you will not, because America needs Abysmal Crucifix. Can’t you believe we aren’t sexual predators?
Sincerely,
Abysmal Crucifix
To my surprise, “Tom” wrote back very quickly.
No.
That was the whole of his response.
He was playing hardball.
I called Lacey Greenwood again. Although it was around three in the morning L.A. time, Lacey was—as usual—up and around, club-hopping. In fact, she sounded more keyed up than usual. There must have been some particularly good bands performing.
“Get Feinstein on the phone,” I snapped. “We have a problem with MySpace.”
“What is it?” Lacey asked.
“They deleted our profile, our best method to communicate with the fans.”
“Why?”
“They think we’re sexual predators.”
“You really think it’s a good idea to try and fight that?”
“We aren’t predators!” But as soon as I said it, I thought: What if Tom Anderson, founder of MySpace, has read Little Riffs Nicky’s private journal? It was stolen in 2003 and leaked to local music-gossip weekly Cro-Mag, and although only excerpts appeared in the magazine, Xeroxed copies of the full journal have floated around the music industry for years. In many ways, Hollywood is a very small town—this could be one of those ways. Having access to that journal wouldn’t exactly give us much credibility in denying support of sexually predatory behavior—trust me.
“All right, all right,” Lacey said.
I heard a click, then another, then nothing for a few seconds. A pop, and static. “You’re on with Harcourt Abimelech Feinstein,” Lacey asked.
“Girth,” a hoarse, elderly voice croaked on the other end of the phone. “It’s three God A.M.!”
“I apologize for the late hour, Mr. Feinstein, but I have an urgent matter.”
“Yes, yes,” Feinstein sighed. “What is it?”
“I can’t login to MySpace.”
Nobody said anything for awhile. I thought the call had dropped and was about to hang up when finally Feinstein said, “So fucking what?”
“Well,” I said, “they sent a message saying we were banned, and I think it has to do with the sexual predator thing.”
“You mean Nicky?”
“No,” I groaned. “When I talked to Lacey earlier, she told me that back in the States a big story is that MySpace is cracking down on sexual predators, and they must have misconstrued our profile for something far worse than it is.”
“Did they listen to the music?”
I chose to ignore that comment. “You have to do something, Herc!” I demanded. “Call and shake those motherfuckers up. We need our profile back if we want to communicate with the people most important to us—the fans.”
“By Christ,” Harcourt Abimelech Feinstein sighed. “Fine, do you have the number for their legal department?”
“They have a legal department?”
“Son of a bitch—”
“What am I paying you for? Look it up.”
“You haven’t paid me in—”
“I’m sorry, Herc, the—fucking Europe, can’t get a damn cell connection to—” I clicked my phone off and smirked.
Twenty minutes later, Feinstein called me back. “All right, Chuckles,” he said, “I called those bastards at MySpace legal. You are sincerely fucking lucky they were pulling an all-nighter for a court appearance tomorrow against your friends the Conquistadors, or else it really could have waited until tomorrow morning—”
“Is this a billable hour?”
“Fuckin’—Girth, here’s the thing: did you not notice that map on your profile is a giant penis?”
“What?”
“Just look at the goddamn thing—even the colors make it look like a penis, you jackass!”
“Harcourt—”
“So they deleted your profile, and you deserved it,” Feinstein said. “However, they’ll give you access to your account, restore your profile, and if you delete that image within 24 hours, they’ll let you keep your account. And be careful in the future—they let your song lyrics slide the same way I slid into your mother’s—”
“Hey!”
“—but it won’t last if you aren’t careful.”
“Fuck it, man. I’m an artist.”
Feinstein hung up on me.
I sat back, feeling good. We fought the law and won. “If we delete your account, it cannot be reinstated”? Bullshit!
To commemorate our brief but eventful banning and resurrection, our resident artist (well, semi-resident—he’s in L.A.) Alistair Freeman designed a t-shirt:
Click here to go to our MERCHANDISE!!! page and purchase this commemorative T-shirt.
Written by Girth McDürchstein on July 29, 2007 11:46 AM
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