Outspoken singer/songwriter Billy Bragg has slammed social-networking site MySpace, along with media tycoon owner Rupert Murdoch.
The musician accuses Murdoch of exploiting artists, claiming an ownership of any copyright work, and taking rights away from artists.
Bragg posted the following explanation: "Sorry there's no music. Once an artist posts up any content (including songs), it then belongs to My Space (aka Rupert Murdoch) and they can do what they want with it, throughout the world, without paying the artist."
When an artist signs up for MySpace the small print on the site informs them that by posting content, "You hereby grant to MySpace.com a non-exclusive, fully-paid and royalty-free, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense through unlimited levels of sublicensees) to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, publicly display, store, reproduce, transmit, and distribute such content on and through the services."
The critism by Bragg now looks to have changed the websites policy towards artist's copyright work.
Jeff Berman, spokesman for MySpace, told the New York Daily News, "Because the legalese has caused some confusion, we are at work revising it to make it very clear that MySpace is not seeking a license to do anything with an artist's work other than allow it to be shared in the manner the artist intends."
"Obviously, we don't own their music or do anything with it that they don't want."
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Outspoken singer/songwriter Billy Bragg has slammed social-networking site MySpace, along with media tycoon owner Rupert Murdoch.
