Has nobody noted the irony of Myspace's lawsuit against Scott Richter, the much-hated "king" of the spam marketing industry? The social network site, now owned by News Corporation, complains that Richter's marketing firms have sent unsolicited commercial messages, disguised as bulletins from the friends of Myspace users. The clash is portrayed in the press as a loss of innocence for Myspace, which began, according to its foundation myth, as "a place for friends", to share music and naughty pictures of themselves. Which does slightly gloss over the past of Chris DeWolfe, Myspace's founder. His previous startup, Responsebase, was a direct marketing firm with more than 30m email addresses. All collected by legitimate means, I'm sure: but the ads sent by Responsebase's clients sure looked looked like spam to the recipients.

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