Zango's Myspace partner still pushing their videos in Myspace

"A partner can't place Zango content on a MySpace site," said Monlux, "but if someone goes to a partner's site, takes Zango content, and puts it on his MySpace profile, that's not a violation of our terms of agreement."

Stan Monlux, Zango - Information Week

Nope, though it probably doesn't mean Mr Myspace will be too impressed. As I wrote here, the site at the center of the Myspace Zango videos fiasco (websites trying to get Myspace users to add "free videos" to their profile, which attempt to install Zango Adware) suddenly pulled its "Myspace videos" page at the peak of the media storm that surrounded this particular story. From looking at the various statements made by Zango at the time this one exploded - here for example:

Stan Monlux, Zango senior director of business development, told internetnews.com they forbid partners from posting Zango content on MySpace profiles. Monlux did admit that some of its partners do violate their Agreement and that Zango detects and deals with them effectively. "We routinely check, and we've built tools that will help us track back the domains from which our applications have been installed," he said.

...you would think his account had been terminated, right? Pushing Zango videoclips (from a site called Myspacegraphicalhelp) that we all know shouldn't be pushed on Myspace, hand in the cookie jar, slap Mr naughty affiliate on the wrist and send him directly to the naughty boy's room.

You would think.

Kill him off, watch the bad press slowly drip away and, eventually, all is right with the world. Nobody is picking on poor Mr affiliate anymore, nobody is wailing on Zango anymore - everybody is smiling again. Hooray.

So, imagine my surprise when I came across the website in the screenshot, pushing - you guessed it - Zango videos as "myspace videos". Time to take this sucker apart, right? Well, a quick check on the whois details tells me the website registrant is...wait for it...

Mark Arruda, the guy who runs the Myspacegraphicalhelp site. You know, the one whose "myspace videos" page mysteriously disappeared at the height of the Zango on Myspace debacle.

If Zango had actually killed his account off for doing the above naughtiness...and you'd assume they had considering his Video page got "pulled" (why pull it if you've done nothing wrong?) their S3 technology should prevent these installs - however, as you can see here, the installs work just fine (you can see Zango is installed in the bottom right hand corner). In fact, the installs work from both the new site I've discovered and the old site with the (now hidden) videopage.

"Now hidden"? Yep. Because the original site still has its page up - it's just not linked to from any of the other pages.

To the left is the "hidden" (ie pulled from public view) page from the Myspacegraphicalhelp site - still there, yet still quite happily installing Zango.

Now, someone please tell me - why is this guy hiding his original movie page when he's still pushing Zango videos elsewhere? The only reason you'd do this is to divert bad press away till the storm blows over. In which case, it wouldn't surprise me very much if the page in the screenshot "miraculously" comes back to life in the near future.

Forgive me for being so bold, but this isn't so much cancelling the guy's account as hiding him behind some bushes for a few weeks.

Either what this guy is doing is wrong, and Zango should have cancelled his account at the time, or they should have refuted everything and thrown it all back in my face. What should not happen, is something where it's made to look like his account has been terminated, only to have him happily carry on installing the Zango Adware across Myspace with his wonderful websites. Is this "detecting and dealing with them effectively"?

"We know where Boyd and others like him stand, and they know where we stand," Stratz said.

Heh - you know something, you're dead right.

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