Myspace blocking blogspot...

It is rare that I get riled enough to write a rant, but today MySpace has managed to poke a sharpened stick into the lion's cage...or, at the very least, a bic pen into the furry side of the sleeping hamster...

You see, whenever I post a new entry to my blog, I like to post a link to it on the various places that I frequent - so I'll post a link on facebook, a link on twitter, a link on a couple of forums I frequent, etc.

But, it turns out that I can't post a link on MySpace. Or rather, I can but MySpace won't let anyone actually follow it - as soon as they click on my link they get directed to a page like this:

Which rather suggests that my link is trying to misdirect unwary visitors to some kind of nefarious spamming, phishing or generally harmful website...

But if you read on, the text below the warning states:

"The specific link may be OK, but the webhost may be the issue. For example, if you are trying to visit a blog or page on some webhost, the specific site or blog may be benign, but because the host/company won't work with MySpace security to block other malicious sites on their domain, we are sometimes forced to block the entire domain."

You see, MySpace in their near infinite wisdom/stupidity (delete as you feel appopriate) have decided that - since there have (allegedly) been some sites hosted on the blogspot domain that have been involved in the above practices - the safest course of action is to block all links heading to blogspot. Yes, that's right - all links to blogspot. Even a link to the official Google blog (which is the 4th biggest technology blog in the world according to technorati, and 16th overall) results in the same - you shall not pass!!!

Now, maybe it's just me, but this seems rather a huge overreaction on the part of MySpace - especially since it's quite happy to allow visitors to link to some very morally dubious sites with nothing more than 'you're leaving MySpace' warning page. Surely it would be possible to have a similar warning page for links to blogspot, allowing individuals to make their own decision on the matter?

Of course, I'm sure the blanket ban has got nothing to do with MySpace wanting to encourage users to publish on the MySpace blogs and not link somewhere else. Oh no, not at all...