I ran across this story the other day and haven't seen it mentioned here, so thought I'd pass it on. An indie-rock band called Bones recently logged in to its MySpace page and found that its content had been replaced by promotional content for the Fox TV Series "Bones."

Who snatched the band's site, why, and how? Well, the band's URL - myspace.com/bones - was apparently coveted by the Fox network and its owner News Corp., which happened to buy MySpace within the last year.

Since the Louisiana-based band relied on its MySpace page as a means to promote itself and stay in touch with fans - and the MySpace URL is on all their posters and other literature - this was a pretty disturbing turn of events. The good news is that once the hububb became public, News Corp. did an about-face and restored the band's original content.
A recent AP article noted:

' "Tom" wrote the band, saying, "I heard about what happened with your URL. I gave it back to ya...Sorry about that! As we grow in size, sometimes people make decisions I don't know about. This was obviously the wrong decision. The Bones URL is yours once again. :-) " '

The story has a further happy ending for the non-corporate Bones. The band has received much publicity from the incident, and has been encouraged by the outpouring of support and good wishes from other indie bands and music fans in general.

Score this one: Rock 'n Rollers- 1, Corporate Cretins- 0.