In 2004, Joe Anthony started an unofficial fan page for Obama at http://myspace.com/barackobama . By the time Obama announced for president, there were 30,000 “friends” attached to the MySpace page. By April, it had 160,000 friends.
However, sometime in late April, Obama’s campaign took control of the site. They had tried to work with Anthony, and it was a good relationship for a while, but by accounts, the work load became too much for him, and he asked to be compensated. In addition, Obama’s team was concerned about minor factual errors on the site, and about having the candidate’s name in the hands of someone unaffiliated with the Senator.
The whole story is here. Obama’s campaign responds here.
I’m not sure where the controversy is here. More or less, even though he had good intentions, Anthony was domain squatting. Courts have routinely upheld that the owner of the name gets the domain. It sucks that he feels gilted, and I personally feel he should have been compensated in some way, but them’s the breaks.
