"Our MySpace Experiment" -- a Big Lie?

Joe Anthony yesterday posted a response to Joe Rospars on his MySpace Blog.  

Reading Joe Rospars' account of the Joe Anthony/Barack Obama MySpace controversy, it's very easy to infer that Joe Anthony was trying to extort money from the campaign:

At the same time, though, the community had skyrocketed. Nobody expected the grassroots to respond this campaign in such large numbers the way they have, and the rapid growth of the MySpace profile once the MySpace Impact Channel began promoting the various candidates is yet another example of the appeal of Barack. We were well over 100,000 friends, and the burden of administering such a profile became immense.

Unfortunately, at that point, Joe changed the password on the profile, and didn't give us the new one, like he had done in the past. This changed the previous dynamic, and we could no longer access the profile at a moment's notice if need be. We asked Joe what was needed to restore access, and subsequently we received the list of itemized financial requests that have been discussed elsewhere.

Joe Anthony breaks down this paragraph into two responses.  First, regarding changing the password:

This is about the time I began to restrict access to the profile, and stopped providing the password to the campaign. I agreed that we should have some agreement before moving forward, and money was not an issue at this point. This was a liability issue if this were to be an official profile, not a money issue.

Further, after a closer examination of the Myspace terms of use at that time, I learned that Myspace prohibits allowing access to any user other than the creator of the page. For this reason, and for security purposes mentioned above, I decided I should cease from allowing the campaign access to the profile until we had a formal agreement (and Myspace's consent).

Second, regarding the financial requests (and this is where I really have a problem with what Joe Rospars posted):

Chris Hughes, in a telephone conversation, indicated that the campaign would prefer to acquire full access to the profile. They did not want an outsider managing an "official" profile, and I understood that. Chris Hughes then suggested that they could offer some type of one-time fee to transfer the profile over to the campaign. I asked him if they had any suggestion or any offer at that time, and he asked me to just think about it and we would speak the following morning. We both agreed that this fee would be largely symbolic, as it was impossible to calculate all of the time I put into it over the past couple of years.

That night, at his request, I did prepare a propsal and emailed it to Chris. I had never prepared such a proposal, and it was on very short notice, but I did the best I could. I thought about it for about 5 hours. I went for a long walk around my neighborhood and thought about what would be fair to all involved. I didn't like the idea of the campaign taking over a Myspace profile which had been a netroots phenomenon before the campaign or Myspace even got involved.

Regardless of my personal convictions, I wanted what was best for the campaign, and obviously Barack Obama, and I trusted that they knew what they were doing. For two and half years I worked very hard without ever expecting to be paid, but if they wanted to take control of this profile and take direct advantage of the community I helped to build, I thought it was fair to be paid. I even specified at that time that the fee was small enough to be cost-effective to the campaign, but large enough to be sure they were taking this community seriously. If they didn't like it, they could've easilly started and built their own Myspace profile and I would've put a link to it on mine. This appears to be what Hillary Clinton did, and it seemed to work out well.

Again, Joe Rospars would have us believe that Joe Anthony changed the password and then made financial demands to the campaign w/o any prompting from them.  I really feel Barack Obama should have his campaign clear this up.  It sounds to me like they threw a dedicated volunteer under a virtual bus.

Updated May 7.

This is still making news in Chicago.  In today's Chicago's Sun Times, Lynn Sweet writes about this continuing controversy.  Apparently Joe Anthony is stressed (I would be too.  I caught enough flak just for posting this, I can't imagine being the guy that Obama fans are accusing of extortion).  From the article:

A passionate discussion about the Anthony controversy on the official Obama campaign blog -- 400 comments Sunday as I write this -- is drawing more reaction than any other blog entry on www.barackobama.com, a sign that the episode touched a raw nerve in a campaign that is emphasizing new media and encouraging supporters to organize on their own.

Obama New Media Director Joe Rospars posted the blog entry. At 7:35 p.m. Saturday, Anthony posted a pointed rebuttal to Rospars at http://myspace.com/... nationalpark.

What continues to surprise me is that the campaign won't take time to clarify what happened.  This is a slow bleed.  And while I don't think it will affect how many people vote,  I do think it provides a clue as to how they'll deal with controversies in the future.