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14:41 GMT, Tuesday, 5 May 2009 15:41 UK

Ronaldo Facebook page 'closed'

By Dan Whitworth
Newsbeat technology reporter

Ronaldo

The biggest unofficial Cristiano Ronaldo Facebook page has been shut down by the site despite having almost three million fans and getting half a million hits every month.

The man behind the page, 25-year-old Kunwar Ali who lives in Pakistan, told Newsbeat he was devastated at what had happened.

"I used to spend six or seven hours on Facebook every day posting updates about Cristiano and have done for the last year.

"Everything is gone and I now have nothing."

The first Kunwar knew about his page behind shut down was on Monday when a friend told him he couldn't log on.

"I don't know why it was removed. It could be a lot of reasons," he said.

Part of the terms and conditions of signing up to Facebook is that unofficial fan pages aren't allowed.

They read: "Fake Pages and unofficial 'fan pages' are a violation of our terms of use. If you create an unauthorized page or violate our terms in any way, your Facebook account may be disabled."

Otherwise there could have been a problem with copyright issues.

Video issue

Kunwar posted lots of updates about Ronaldo, especially during his on/off transfer to Real Madrid last summer.

While there were no issues with any text he put on the page, Facebook is strict about rights when it comes to video.

But as soon as Kunwar realised this he removed any videos that were on his page.

"I spoke to a copyright lawyer and he said that I should not share video content, that I should take the videos down. So that is what I did."

He also said he'd been in touch with Ronaldo's representatives in the past.

"I even offered them the chance to take it over, for it to become an official page but they said it wasn't something they were looking at."

There are still dozens of pages set up as a tribute to Ronaldo on Facebook with tens of thousands of fans.

Kunwar added: "I spent one full year of my life on this page and if someone asks me what I did with myself I have nothing. Everything is gone."




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