The MySpace high-profile outages gave rise to rumors that profiles had been deleted. MySpace denied that any accounts were lost in the blackouts, but that hasn't stopped posts from people who claim otherwise--some of which involve speculation involving copyrights.

More than a few have voiced suspicion that profiles may have been taken down because they weren't sanctioned by bands or contained unauthorized material, not because MySpace needed more storage space or lost them when its servers choked.

Long before the recent reports of deleted profiles, such suspicions had proliferated predictably after MySpace was bought by News Corp., a move that was widely expected to result in more restrictions on the site as it was brought into the corporate fold. But then again, other conspiracy theorists say the music conflicts are dwarfed by a much larger form of oppression: the systematic deletion of files for political reasons.