Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
By JORDAN ROBERTSON
Associated Press
SAN JOSE - An early investor in MySpace sued the popular social networking Web site today, claiming the company violated antitrust laws by blocking links to his new online video-sharing venture.
Brad Greenspan, chief executive of Los Angeles-based LiveUniverse Inc., claims that last month MySpace began deleting references on user pages to his new Web site, vidiLife.com, and has dismantled video links and blocked users from mentioning the site.
Both sites allow users to post videos and create online profiles for swapping media and collecting Internet pen pals.
``MySpace has no legitimate business justification for its actions,'' read the suit, filed in a Los Angeles federal court.
Instead, MySpace's actions constitute ``an attempt to monopolize the market for Internet-based social networking services in the United States.''
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and an order that MySpace restore all references to vidiLife.
MySpace, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., said in a statement that it routinely blocks links to Web sites for violating copyright protections, and that vidiLife.com had been identified by Universal Music Group as a ``primary source of infringing UMG content.''
It declined to comment further because it had not yet reviewed the complaint.
Greenspan formerly was chief executive of Los Angeles-based Intermix Media Inc., which owned MySpace and was sold last year for $580 million to News Corp.
An outspoken opponent of the sale, Greenspan submitted his own bid for the company but was denied by Intermix's board. Last month, a state court judge in Los Angeles rejected his lawsuit challenging the sale. Greenspan vowed to appeal.
Greenspan left Intermix in 2003 amid an informal regulatory inquiry into accounting restatements.
The New York Attorney General's office then began looking into allegations the company secretly installed adware and spyware on millions of home computers, and Greenspan agreed to a pay $750,000 in a settlement that did not include an admission of guilt.
