Did you know that MySpace is owned by FOX? Yep. Our pal, Rupert Murdoch bought the website earlier this year and plans to use the vast amount of personal data stored therein (mainly personal data on America’s young people) to reap big monies from search-based advertising. This is not some new technology, obviously FOX is not on the forefront here - but they see what Google and Yahoo have been able to do with this kind of technology and are keen to have a go themselves.

I find it ironic that a conservative ideologue would buy a website that is rife with sexual predators stalking young people - it seems, with the main goal of attempting to use click/search analytics to exploit them even more effectively.

Personally I’ve always been pretty amazed that FOX News can make itself appear to be so much of an American media channel when it’s really based in Australia (Murdoch’s News Ltd company that owns FOX is an Australian entity). The FCC approved of the deal in 1995 because it was ‘in the public interest’ even though ownership of an American broadcasting company by a foreign entity was supposed to be illegal according to the Communications Act of 1934 (which was still valid at that time). The telecommunications Act of 1996 quickly did away with the provisions in the earlier act that dealt with Foreign Directors:

(k) FOREIGN DIRECTORS- Section 310(b) (47 U.S.C. 310(b)) is
amended–
(1) in paragraph (3), by striking `of which any officer or
director is an alien or’; and
(2) in paragraph (4), by striking `of which any officer or
more than one-fourth of the directors are aliens, or’.