Obama's MySpace Drama 483
fistfullast33l writes "TechPresident, which is covering the use of technology by Presidential Campaigns for 2008, has a very interesting article on how Obama's MySpace page is currently the subject of an underground battle for control by the campaign itself and the volunteer who created it in 2004. Joseph Anthony worked with the campaign initially and grew the site to include over 160,000 unsolicited friends that the campaign could use to reach out to. It currently is the main Obama page in the Impact Channel on MySpace. However, as Obama's campaign became more centralized and formal, the decision was made to attempt to acquire control of the site from Anthony. They asked him for a price, which he offered up as $49,000 plus part of the $10,000 fee paid to MySpace for the Impact Channel. Obama balked at the price, and decided to start afresh rather than pay the money. The fight broke out into the open when Anthony posted a response on his blog to rumors that the campaign was spreading regarding him wanting to cash out. MyDD has more."
What did you expect? (Score:3, Insightful)
50K doesn't seem that much I guess... (Score:4, Insightful)
But why would you need money for this, anyway? Compenstation for work already done?
Anyway, considering the millions raised for campaigning, 50,000 is not so much.
Re:Obama's Space Drama (Score:2, Insightful)
If the guy didn't like having the account taken from him, he shouldn't have posed it as the official site. And if his claims that it wasn't about money aren't true, then where are the specific amounts of money coming from? This happens all the time with celebrities when someone cyber-squats on a domain name and then tries to sell it back to the celeb for big money....
$19 Million on Hand ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm getting the feeling that I'm not hearing the whole story here. Nobody's doing anything wrong though, this is clear cut capitalism. The man has the only supply for the product
Re:What did you expect? (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand, the volunteer's decision to try and cash out rather than cooperate with the campaign is a little short-sighted. If he really thought Obama had a shot at winning, he might have been better served to work with the campaign, maintain their official page, and use that leverage to angle for a cushy government job when Obama got elected.
Not Scum (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a lot like Valve and the mods that came out of Half Life. Valve in that case hired the Counterstrike and DoD teams and gave them jobs. Obama decided they didn't want to do that and instead asked the guy to come up with a sum of money. As MyDD points out, it's roughly 32 cents per friend. That's not too shabby considering how much money they throw away on consultants. And it's only a one time payment. For a campaign that just raised $26 million, to balk at $50,000 is pretty crazy in my opinion.
Who Reads Politician's Web Site to Get the Facts? (Score:1, Insightful)
If you want the facts about the politician, then look at this voting record. His past voting record will indicate how he will future in the future.
By the way, the best candidate for president is Ron Owens, talk-show host on KGO 810 AM in San Francisco.
The true Obana makes a showing (Score:5, Insightful)
I can see both sides. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:What did you expect? (Score:3, Insightful)
Your comment mangles what really is going on here. The guy asked for compensation and to become a paid consultant to the campaign. The campaign countered by saying they wanted a one time payment and full control. He gave them an offer and they balked. He's been cooperating with them all along, but the minute he suggested some kind of compensation, it got ugly. Of course, it's not clear what compensation he asked for initially, but the lump sum was the campaign's idea.
Re:Obama's Space Drama (Score:5, Insightful)
The Obama campaign solicited a figure from him.
It's not a cut-and-dried case of squatting -- Anthony had actually worked with the campaign on the profile. The campaign had password access, so that they could maintain some kind of control over the content just-in-case.
It isn't about money, IMO. This guy built a significant amount of grassroots support for Obama, then found out that presidential politics is big business, and there's no room for the little guy. How would you feel if a 2.5 year labor of love was pulled out from underneath you? The campaign told him to make an offer... he did, based upon an approximated value of the time he spent on the profile this year. They scoffed, and went around him.
I don't blame the creator of the profile. I don't blame the Obama campaign, either -- centralized control is necessary for presidential campaigns today.
It's politics, sometimes people don't get what they want and feelings get hurt. Same as it ever was, same as it ever will be.
Flamebait? Come on (Score:5, Insightful)
God, remember when she was cool, and had convictions? National health care, remember that? Washington ruined that woman.
Re:Obama's Space Drama (Score:2, Insightful)
Hardly relevant. I don't vote for anyone based on race, or color, or heritage. Only his record counts. Ask him what he'll do about the war, the patriot act, and prohibition, and maybe IP law.
Don't you love Politicains (Score:2, Insightful)
He's not a money grabber, I can understand his point of view if I worked hard on something finally got some recognition and then got treated in a similar way as he did I'd want a 'symbol' for my efforts.
Re:What did you expect? (Score:4, Insightful)
So what's the issue here?
You obviously didn't RTFAs. The Obama campaign literally STOLE his myspace account from him. If they had just agreed to part company, there would be no issue.
Character (Score:3, Insightful)
Republicrats are all the same. (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that they made it clear to him that he would NOT be part of the future of the page. The one time payment was just a trap, and the guy fell for it. No matter how crooked they were in going about it, they can destroy his credibility by saying he was just in it for the cash. Even if he had said no to the payment offer, they would have muscled him out one way or another.
The polite thing to do would have been to split the different and give the guy some chump change for his costs and an invite to a few events as a special contributor. Would a few dinners really dent that $28 million dollar campaign?
Anyways, who cares. Obama is nothing more than a republicrat. He's riding the Bush bashing coat tails like all of the democrats but he hasn't shown anything of substance for how he is going to do things better on his watch. Preaching to the choir that Bush sucks is great and all, but what does he actually bring to the table? 4 more years of political foot play at the tax payers' expense.
Nah, if you want real change... Gore/Edwards in '08, now THAT would be an exciting 4 years.
-Rick
Re:What did you expect? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What did you expect? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then instead of providing a counter offer, they simply accuse him of profitering and proceed to hijack the site from him. That is short sited anyway you look at. They are doing this because they thought he's an individual nobody. What could he possibly do to retaliate (read "typical big guy squish little guy think"). And now they are getting bad press because of it (read "short-sighted"). He's already sustained his loss (MySpace page was hijacked) which won't change his life really. They are only now going to begin to discover the loss to there credibility, which could potentially be very damaging. (Well, for the few people that are naive enough to give any credibitlity to any candidate.)
Re:What did you expect? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's beside the fact that numerous posters already explained that he isn't extorting anything. $49k for a good portion of 2.5 years of work is cheap. Do you think the rest of his upper-level campaigners are working for free? They may not be getting cash now, but you better believe they expect 6-figure salary jobs in the Administration when he's elected. That, or government contracts or some other form of power/money.
Re:Scumbags (Score:5, Insightful)
This is some guys personal web site, that favored Obama. He set it up YEARS before Obama was announced he was in the presidential race.
Did he ask for money? NO.
This was his baby, his project to help Obama.
Then some low level staffer says "HEY, I like your idea, only I want to run it."
He responds: "No thank you, this mine. Go make your own".
Low level greedy staffer responds "I am one laze SOB. I don't want to do the work, I just want the credit. How much to buy your work?"
Honest, hard working guy responds "Well, if the Obama campaing really wants my personal Pro Obama web site, I could sell it to you. It cost me $10 grand in outright cash, and more than 3 years worth of work. If you really don't want me to run my web site anymore, and want to run it yourself, I'll give it to you for a measily 50 grand."
Read the article first, instead of getting all huffy about who did what.
Re:Obama's Space Drama (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What did you expect? (Score:3, Insightful)
So what's the issue here? Guy gets greedy, and/or overestimates his own value, and loses?
Imagine if you had registered obamarocks.com and gained the support of hundreds of thousands of individuals for Obama. The campaign team gets interested, offers to buy you out, you don't agree on the details, so they convince ICANN to take the domain from you and in return they register obamaisgood.com and let you use that instead. What good is a URL that nobody knows about given that you spent years building up traffic to the one you originally created?
Foolish (Score:5, Insightful)
After a while, Origin came along and asked how much I'd be willing to sell it to them for. My answer? Tell me what you think is fair. After all, its their game not mine. They picked a number, I agreed and that was that.
I could have picked a number that was representative of the manpower I put in to making the site. I could have gotten in to a big fight where they accuse me of copyright infringement and I accuse them of bullying, etc. etc.
I could have, but I didn't. I didn't build the site to make money and at the end of the day it was their game, not mine. So I smiled and said, "thank you," sent them a zip file of the content and put a redirect on my web site that pointed to the site's new home.
Joseph Anthony is nobody. Its Obama's myspace profile; Anthony is just a fan. He should have turned it over along with a list of expenses and said, "pay me what you think is fair."
Re:What did you expect? (Score:1, Insightful)
The issue is that the campaign team didn't want to pay for the URL and now MySpace took it away from him forcefully when requested by the campaign team. That's not fair: if they didn't want to buy the site, they should have just started their own, and let Anthony keep his site.
This is an instance of "either you give it to us on our terms, or we'll take it away from you". It's shameful that MySpace takes part in this (but I don't think it surprises anyone).
Re:Obama's Space Drama (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:$19 Million on Hand ... (Score:4, Insightful)
It is about principles. I have done alot of grunt work for a political party in Sweden, maybe it is different for the Democrats in the US, but in general, you don't get paid. You do it on your own free will because you want your party to succeed. A select few functionaries get paid, usually the minimum salary for their competence level possible and are still expected to do lots of volunteer work. I would be surprised if any of all the telemarketers that do the real work in Obama's fundraising campaign are paid anything above the minimum wage.
Only when you get higher up in the party hiearchy can you expect to earn a decent living doing political work. But even then you are severly underpaid compared to what you can earn in other sectors. Even Bush and his appointed staff could probably earn a much higher salary working for a private company than working for the US.
From that point of view, it really does not make sense that this person should be able to cash in on his volunteer work while thousands of other volunteer worker gets nothing. Sure, give him back his 10 grand he invested, but he really can not and should not expect to be able to earn money doing volunteer work.
Re:This is what happens (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless you are a realist. (?!)
Welcome to the real world, step right in!
Mods, PLEASE double check parent (Score:2, Insightful)
It is very possible that Obama is not at fault here: I would guess that this is all the unilateral action of an evil campaign aid. However, I must agree with the grandparent: politicians (or at least the dirty little henchman that skulk around them) are complete scum.
:Just another sleazeball politician (Score:4, Insightful)
I do. You don't take what isn't yours. It's a pretty old principle last time I checked. If it was really important, they would have built up their own MySpace page instead of hijacking someone elses.
How you treat the people underneath you in your daily interactions says a lot about you. How you run your campaign is the same thing. I'll be looking at what Mike Gravel has to say now, thanks.
Re:What did you expect? (Score:3, Insightful)
Obama's campaign underestimated the importance of something they could have started on their own, didn't make an agreement with the guy when they still could have had the chance to take it over for free, then after the guy puts his own money and who knows how much time into the page they realize the importance of this campaign tool. I say good for the guy. $49k, - $5000 (half of his out of pocket costs) = $44k salary for maintaining a campaign website. Granted, a myspace page isn't the same as maintaining a website, but if someone wanted to buy something from me that I worked on for 3 years, $11.3k a year for back administration isn't asking too much in my opinion. After all, you're paying the guy for his initiative and recognizing an important campaign tool ahead of the curve.
Re::Just another sleazeball politician (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What did you expect? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Republicrats are all the same. (Score:3, Insightful)
So are they the giant douche or the turd sandwich?
Foolish, but who's foolish? (Score:3, Insightful)
Basically, a really dumb move on the part of the Obama campaign.
The situation just isn't analogous to yours. Politicians are a LOT more reliant on public opinion and personal connections than a game company is.
Re:Republicrats are all the same. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Definitely Not Scum (Score:3, Insightful)
Say after a few years, an animal shelter no longer needs the services of a volunteer dog walker because a group of professional dog handlers agree to walk the dogs. Wouldn't you think it would be a little unfair if the dog walker asked for compensation as if he worked there? The guy probably does deserve a dinner or some nice gifts for his services, but he agreed to work as a volunteer, not as an employee.
That's not a good analogy. Here's how your dogwalking idea would fit this situation better. Let's say the dogwalkers invented a machine that walked all the dogs. They spent 2.5 years working out the bugs; getting it just right. Then, the animal shelter says, "Hey, we don't need your services any more, but your machine is pretty neat. How much do you want for it?" Then, the shelter proceeds to have the cops confiscate the machine and deliver it to the shelter.
The only difference between this new scenario and the Obama MySpace flap is that there's no "real" property involved. Still a crappy way to treat someone who volunteered for you for 2.5 years.
Re:Obama's Space Drama (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Obama's Space Drama (Score:3, Insightful)
If you volunteer at a nonprofit organization doing what you normally do for pay then you can usually deduct from your federal income the value of that time at your regular rates as a contribution. So when this guy got a buyout offer it's perfectly reasonable to expect him to quote back professional rates.
Besides, $49k to a serious presidential candidate is, what, less than 10 plates at an upscale donor dinner?
Re:50K doesn't seem that much I guess... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Obama's Space Drama (Score:1, Insightful)
I bought a beat up motorcycle, and worked on getting it working again. I knew you liked riding motorcycles so lent it to you. You decided to race competitively, so wanted to own the motorcycle and asked for a price. You didn't like the price I gave, so just kept the motorcycle anyway and complained about how I was trying to rip you off.
Re:What did you expect? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What did you expect? (Score:1, Insightful)
Wake up! EVERY politician lies, cheats, steals, and then passes laws to make those things legal - Democrats, Republicans, WHATEVER. They all take your money! While Clinton might have spent $50,000,000,000 your money on health care, Bush spent $500,000,000,000 of your money on a war to "liberate" people who honestly appear neither want nor deserve freedom.
Fuck your partisanship and your naive ideal of "good" parties and "bad" parties. The only two parties are the *people* who earn a living, and the powerful elite who try to take what you're earned from you.
Re:Obama's Space Drama (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it depends. Maybe he did a lot more than was expected of him. It may have been a reasonable value for what he actually did, but if he'd been contracted to do it at professional rates they might never have gone forward with what he 'volunteered' doing.
I've done volunteer work, and I frequently do far more than is necessary, get the job the done perfect instead of just getting it done, or use it as a skunkworks to develop/practice new skills. Its my time, its a labor of love, so why not?
For example a professional mechanic/bodyshop working on a customers car will see a bit of rust, polish it off, and apply touch up... that same guy working on his own project car, his 'labor of love' might strip the vehicle to the frame and give it an acid wash, weld in new metal anywhere that's showing the first signs of deterioration and then repaint it.
Besides, $49k to a serious presidential candidate is, what, less than 10 plates at an upscale donor dinner?
That's really beside the point.
Re:Flamebait? Come on (Score:3, Insightful)
No, because the Republicans believe they are only elected to represent the people who voted for them, rather than the whole country. So a little less than half of us will lose if the Republicans win.
Re:Foolish (Score:4, Insightful)
Joseph Anthony is nobody.
Yeah, but, in theory, that's not supposed to matter under our system.
Re:Republicrats are all the same. (Score:3, Insightful)
I've heard three candidates, Gore, Obama, and Clinton are the front runners, and all I can say is the republicans are going to win. Why? Because democrats are dumbasses.
Let's assume Clinton gets the nod. Well now you have people who hated her husband, people who don't want a woman president, people who don't like her. Even the democratic female vote is cooling off on her. She'd be a hard sell to win if she was a man, having her as woman is going to make it near impossible.
Obama looks good, except he's joined in on the democratic chanting that "bush is bad". He doesn't seem to consider the war, and has become as the parent mentioned a Republicrat (which is a good term, hiding their politics by pretending to be on one side, and it worked in 2006, though I think people realized that the democrats who got elected arn't going to do what they promised, no real surprise) The big problem with Obama is he has NO track record worth mentioning, he's a junior senator, he wrote a book, whoopie. He has no reason to run for president except that he's black and well spoken. Sadly this makes him the best candidate in the democratic party.
Gore is passionate about the environment, and great for him. However he's also been described as the most polarizing figure by members of the side of environment on the debate on global warming. That's not a good trait. Outside of his favorite idea It's a downhill drop. He's got negative charisma, he's boring, and he doesn't have the quick thinking which will kill him in debates unless he over-reherses. He already lost to Bush which the Democrats seemed to think was the worse possible choice that the republicans could have made (at least that's what they have been saying for 7+ years). What makes you think he'll win now?
I mean there's Kucinch and others also running but come on. The democrats burnt a lot of bridges this year and last year, and pretty much the last 6 years, and 2 years from now when we see that congress has done nothing they promised and everything they didn't, then we'll start hearing "it's because of Bush". But it's the fact that they want to grandstand and grab as much power as they can now.
Remember the Republican are looking at Mccain and Guiliani, not bad candidates. They aren't going to try to elect a Hitler so you can run anyone who isn't Hitler. Bush won the last election by a decent margin, so apparently no matter what the democrats try to make us believe the country still thinks the war is right or Bush is the right man for the job over a Kerry type candidate. So why isn't the democrats thinking a little smarter about this?
Re:Flamebait? Come on (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why we so desperately need term limits.
And most importantly (Score:3, Insightful)
If they're pricks as campaign staffers, they'll be prick when it actually matters
Obama needs to spend some time with his campaign, it appears, as if he's bringing these guys to the dance it's time to spend my campaign contributions on a different candidate.
Re:What did you expect? (Score:1, Insightful)
If you're an example of how he and his supporters think, then he doesn't have a chance in hell to be elected.
Re:What did you expect? (Score:3, Insightful)
He did not set out to make a profit! He first asked to be apart of the campaign as a contributor (by maintaining his myspace page). They rejected this, saying instead that they wanted to give a one-time payment and take total control. So he gave them a very generous offer (considering he had invested money in the page, and spent three years of his life working on it). So, they just took what they wanted.
He asked for $10,000 for the registration plus $50,000. That's not particularly generous, I really doubt he spent three man years on it. In any event, they only seem to have wanted the URL, not the site, so reimburesement for the $10K seems quite fair.
You also ignore the fact that he named his site after another person WHOM HE DID NOT ASK FOR PERMISSION. In pretty much all aspects of trademark law and similar with which I am familiar, he would find himself similarly screwed. He does not have the right to insinuate himself into the campaign. He does not have the right to hold hostage a domain (or a myspace site) named after another person. He asked for too much and got screwed. Too bad.
In other words, again - if you don't want your site hijacked by someone, DON'T GIVE IT THEIR EXACT NAME.
Re:Flamebait? Come on (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny, I feel that the Democrats believe the same thing.
Re:Flamebait? Come on (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't want Hillary to win either the primary or the general predominantly because it would be like poking in all the agitated internets pitbull's (like above sibling comments) cages with sticks. Who wants to listen to 4-8 years of incessant frothy-mouthed barking?
Re:Bill Richardson (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, that goes without saying...but now that you mention it, it is a given. But mass media is really pushing to keep them out in front, and you can be sure they expect big dividends on their "investment".
Re:Flamebait? Come on (Score:4, Insightful)
I know I won't convince you, your mind is obviously made up. But perhaps others more open minded will read this, look at the evidence, and come to the same conclusions I have based on the facts.
Re:And most importantly (Score:3, Insightful)
If they're pricks as campaign staffers, they'll be prick when it actually matters
More accurately, they'll be even bigger pricks when they don't have to worry about that pesky election and the inconvenience of public opinion...
Re:Bill Richardson (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Flamebait? Come on (Score:5, Insightful)
I need to state for the record that, Democrat though I may be, I have no problem with real conservatives. That is, those who advocate a smaller Federal government, states rights, and fiscal responsibility. That is not what the current Republican party stands for. They stand for anything that benefits big corporations, the religious right, and borrow and spend lunacy.
It must suck being a Republican these days and feeling as though you have to defend the indefensible. I almost feel sorry for you.
It's All in the Name (Score:4, Insightful)
When I first read about Obama's MySpace fight, it looked like Joseph Anthony had been wronged. After all he did create and maintain the MySpace account. Then I noticed the name of the profile. The profile name is not "PasadenaForObama" or "ObamaFans". The profile name is "BarackObama". Anthony knew (or should have known) that his claim to ownership of the profile would always be weak to nonexistent. The amount of time and effort he spent working on the account is irrelevant.
The Obama campaign is not without fault, though. They should have never even solicited a financial offer from Anthony. Instead, the campaign should have offered signed books, buttons, shirts, and a handwritten thank you letter from Obama himself.
As a contributor to the Obama campaign myself, I would have been annoyed to see my cash pay for Obama to purchase his own name. I am disappointed that the Obama campaign made the mistake of solicited an offer, but the bottom line is that Anthony was not wronged.
Re:Flamebait? Come on (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm also sorry that you've never gotten to know and trust someone to the point that you can love them, and not the fantasy you have about them. It is one of the most crucial steps towards having an adult relationship. Maybe you haven't met the right person yet.
Re:Obama's Space Drama (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmmmm... except for the Christian part. He's really not one of those. And Socialist....well, sort of in some areas.
All in all, he's really pretty much a fascist more than either or both of those.
the Goldwater/Reagan party is dead.
Not true. The Goldwater party is dead. The Reagan party is alive and well and proceeding on course.
The similarities between Bush and Reagan are far more numerous and striking than the differences. Apart from the fact that Reagan was an actor, so better at bare faced lying without sounding like a fool than Bush, I really see almost no differences between their administrations that can't be accounted for by the fact that they are looking to make "progress" in a direction and Reagan already did a lot of that, so no need to repeat it just expand on the same programs.
I often hear people who dislike Bush talking about how great Reagan was and it really blows my mind given how damn near identical their administrations are even to the people in them.
Massive overspending on a largely made up threat based on Donald Rumsfeld's falsified and doctored evidence? Check for both of them.
Massive attacks on personal liberty? Check for both of them (and most other presidents...but I digress)
Active support and promotion of terrorism? Check for both.
Actively working for religious extremists against the fundamental basis of this country? Check for both.
I mean really apart from the fact that Reagan was good at giving "inspirational" speeches while fucking the country instead of sneering and snickering while doing so what real, solid, meaningful differences do you even see between Reagan and Bush's administrations?
Re:Flamebait? Come on (Score:3, Insightful)
For the record, I never specifically disagreed with the post I originally replied to. I was merely stating that I don't see the Democrats as any different.