WASHINGTON, DC /DenounceNewswire/ -- 12 November 2005 -- In a joint press conference today, Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp., Intermix CEO Richard Rosenblatt, and MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe announced that they have reached an agreement to provide a full and ongoing feed of Myspace membership data to the United States Selective Service System for the upcoming military draft.

In exchange for the user records, which include names, age, gender, addresses, telephone numbers, and email addresses, the U.S. Government agreed to waive News Corp and all of its subsidiaries from paying any corporate taxes for a period of five years.

"This is a great day for America," said William A. Chatfield, Director of the United States Selective Service System, who was also present at the press conference. "With our new access to the twenty-five million MySpace members, 97% of whom are eligible for the draft, we are able to better defend America and provide a sufficient number of troops wherever they may be needed in the weeks and months to come."

As part of the agreement, all new registrations in the MySpace service will automatically be copied to the Selective Service for strorage and processing. User identities will be entered in the Selective Services's Lottery system, by which names are chosen based on birth date. In related news, Myspace CEO DeWolfe pointed out that 67% of all MySpace users' birth dates occur on January 1.

Existing members' information has already been transferred to the Selective Service, said Mr. Murdoch. "We wanted to make sure we could cooperate as swiftly and efficiently as possible in meeting the Government's needs," he said.

Chatfield also announced a the U.S. Government is seeking a deal with The FaceBook as well, but that terms were still being worked out.

Posted by denounce on November 13, 2005 02:37 PM