The inaugural Australian Internet music awards, the ONYAs, have been marred by a cheating scandal, which has resulted in two bands being disqualified from the event.
The awards are designed to recognise excellence in the development of Australian Music related Internet sites. The ONYAs will be determined on popular choice, based on votes made at the award's Web site. The ONYA Awards are being produced by music media company IMMEDIA!, publisher of the AustralAsian music directory.
It was revealed today that two bands had been disqualified from the event due to voting irregularities. Wagga based band Seventh has been disqualified from the awards on the basis of alleged voting irregularities by the band's U.S. based Web master.
According to IMMEDIA!'s Phil Tripp, Seventh's Web master created a number of extra email addresses with which to vote with.
"They had this 15 year old Web master and he apparently started creating phoney email addresses on the account and flooding the awards, and we started to notice Seventh rocketing up the chart," Tripp noted. "When we checked the reports something looked wrong."
Tripp pointed out that the incidence of problems with the voting has been "very, very low", but that such harsh actions were necessary to ensure the reputation of the awards and the sponsors.
"The reason is that we took what might seem to be hard action, is that we have to protect the interest of our sponsors, OzEmail, Microsoft and Apple," he stated. "Above everything else this whole contest was meant to honour innovators and pioneers of online distributors, not just create an opportunity for someone to flout the rules and cheat someone out of their rightful votes."
Tripp said that it was regretful that Seventh had to be disqualified from the voting, but that the band had to be responsible for the actions of their young Web master.
"If you're going to hand over the keys to your Internet business car and an unlicensed 15 year and he old wraps it around the cyber tree, don't think that you can unbend the fender and not be responsible for the damage."
The identity of the other band disqualified was not disclosed.
