MCD threatens Indo and board.ie over Oxegen music festival campsite claims

- MCD; no news “critical of the event”
- Irish Independent threatened
- board.ie threatened with legal action
- boards.ie bans all MCD talk for a week
- Oxegen.ie forums closed

When the Irish Independent contacted the concert promoters about alleged trouble in a campsite of a music festival they were told “whatever action is necessary” would be taken if “an article critical of the event” was published.

"We must warn you that in the event that an article critical of the event is published, we will take whatever action is necessary to prevent damage to the Oxegen event or MCD Productions" MCD spokesman Justin Green told the Irish Independent newspaper.

Separately MCD told the Irish Mirror that “We are at a loss to understand why you believe this is worthy of a story".

According to claims printed by the Independent, in the campsite a number of tents were set on fire, and there were “unprovoked attacks” on concertgoers. Fires and fight in isolation are seen as normal for this event, however it is said that this year in was somewhat widespread in at least one of the campsites on Sunday evening, with people leaving early that night and the next morning. "We left everything and got out at 5 on Monday morning because it was so dangerous", Niall Power, a Beat FM DJ, told the Indo.

With people saying "I feared for my life”, it’s understandable why MCD would be getting worried. Oxegen caters for a large number of under-18s and young adults, this type of news “critical of the event” could make parents further reluctant to allow their children to attend such events, as well as making some teenagers genuinely fearfully of attending.

Meanwhile boards.ie has also been threatened with legal action by MCD. A statement published on their Gigs / Events section states, “Due to threats of legal action directed at boards.ie, a not-for-profit website that hosts the largest online discussion forum in Ireland and has over 60,000 users, the administration of boards.ie have judged it safest to completely censor all references to MCD and [their concerts]”.

Continuing it says, “we cannot guarantee that discussions involving MCD in any way will not prompt a user to post something regarding the negative rumours. As our moderators are not full-time, paid staff members, we cannot guarantee that we can catch such references immediately to delete them”. Because of this, boards.ie has implemented a ban on any discussion on MCD, their venues, concerts, and associated artists, for at least one week.

The threats to the newspaper and discussion forum website follow the closure of forum at the official Oxegen website.

[Full disclosure: The author of the above is a voluntary moderator on boards.ie, however has no dealings or responsibility on the forums which MCD or their events would be discussed. All of the above is in the public domain. And as always the author is writing here on his own behalf]

Comments

[Ranger]

you are the first irish blogger to pick up on this story. i'm amazed that it has taken over 2 weeks for anyone in the irish blogosphere to get this - it has been all over conventional media (print and radio) and online boards but, yet again, irish blogs are slow to react.

[Cian Ginty]

To be fair, I found these (after I published the above) - Globaleyes bit got in a few hours before me and Blogorrah most likely early in the day…

http://www.blather.net/globaleyes/archives/2006/07/why_are_mcd_trying_to_silence.html http://blogorrah.com/2006/07/barney_of_the_day_the_sindo_vs.php

[Sweeney]

Jim Carroll in The Ticket now in on the story as well. He asked MCD why they pulled down the Oxegen site and they said it was always their plan!

http://www.ireland.com/theticket/articles/2006/0728/1153813817900.html

[mcdwatch.org]

Have an opinion on Oxygen, Hi:Fi or other events then visit http://www.mcdwatch.org to share it!

Openly looking for volunteering ops, admins.. moderators etc.. get in touch forum@mcdwatch.org

Cheers!

mcdwatch.org

[Cheryl Steen]

I travelled from England to Ireland for the oxegen festival. I wish i had not bothered the organisation of getting people in was non existing and the place was filled with "mummies kiddies on their first trip away from home with alcohol"!!What a big mistake. I have never been to such a rubbish place and it will take someone being seriously hurt or worse before they stop it taking place. Of course the organisers want to ban the negative comments, lets face it i don't think they got much else, well apart from stupid comments from the drunken kiddies themselves!! I will never go again the music was amazing but the organisation was a shambles i don't imagine they could organise people getting drunk in a pub (to put it politely!) I could go into much more detail as to what i saw but i think others have pretty much said it. I think i will stick to well run places next year in England and leave Ireland where it belongs (in the past ages!!) From a still very annoyed English person.

[carl]

well to be honest thats what oxygen is really, a big drunk filthy music fest. pretty unfair as its advertised differently

[Casey Shedd]

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