The template doesn’t even look that good, rather dull in my opinion. He doesn’t seem to have as many friends as some people, he still has more than me though so I cant really say anything, lol.

Wow, that is actually pretty hilarious. I need to find time to meet Mike Davidson. We know how to pull the perfect pranks here in Seattle.

Oh yeah, and I wonder how long he spends in his myspace area adding friends, surely he would have more useful things to do. I suppose it draws up support though.

It was an extremely unprofessional thing for someone in Mike Davidson’s position (CEO of NewsVine) to do.

The staffer may have copied the template from another MySpace profile not knowing that it was something that is “protected”.

Just in case you’re wondering, no I’m not republican… but I feel this was way out of line.

I’m not going to lie. I’ve done something very similar to this when I’ve caught people using images without crediting me in the past….

trevo: Yep, no disagreement there. Occurring 20 months before the election, I’d file this under “harmless prank” though. We can’t all wear the suit and tie 24/7. If anything, it’ll bring Senator McCain some more traffic to his MySpace page.

Here’s my account of the Microsoft incident as well.

HAHAHAHAHAA! I’ve found most of the campaigns are pretty clueless on social networking but you think they would have some knowledge about basic web practices.

this is totally within the realm of fair game. if they use your stuff and don’t credit you — and beyond that(!) are pulling from your server and draining your bandwidth, you have every right to do whatever you want with your images.

and btw, 70 years old is way too old to be on MySpace. anyone over 24 is old enough to realize that MySpace sucks.

There was an incident on one of my blogsites Tech Review Zone, where one of my writers had hotlinked an image like this and the owner of the image changed it to something else (cant remember what it was though) but it took me hours to sort out with apologising onto all the blogs and forums that the owner of the image had posted on about the incident. A word to all bloggers, dont hotlink, lol

Don’t say the MySpace page was hacked. Because it wasn’t. Davidson just changed an image on his OWN server. I get that it makes for a better headline, but next thing you know, Davidson will be arrested on trumped up charges of hacking and unauthorized access of computers. That isn’t what happened here.

Mike D: Yup this probably won’t hurt McCain’s campaign.

But what I find ironic with all these comments who accuse McCain’s campaign of “stealing” are these are the EXACT people who think stealing music is okay and everything Web2.0 should be free.

Holy Purple Cow!

trevo: Agreed. Think of it this way. This sort of theft is not worthy of prosecution, but it’s worthy of a little fun, and so that’s what we’re having. I do not consider this harmful theft… just negligence.

Damn, I seriously L-O-L’d at that one :)

It just got pulled though. I checked his myspace page and there it was, 5 minutes later looked again and it was gone :(

It’s still there!

trevo:
Just in case you’re wondering, no I’m not republican…

That’s ok, neither is McCain, really. ::rimshot::

;-)

LOL. Nice find. Just goes to show you that one should give proper credit where credit is due. Maybe in the interim, John will pick up some new supporters. ;)

It’s not there anymore, you just need to clear your cache.

I agree, calling it a ‘hack’ is very misleading.

Good move by Mike Davidson. The ‘web designer’ for McCain should have known better.

I did a similar thing with one of my images that I found was being widely hotlinked – using htaccess I had the hotlinked files replaced with a picture of an old lady flipping the bird along with a few words about bandwidth theft. Had some hilarious reactions to that – but the hotlinkers only have themselves to blame.

it’s gone now, literally in the last 5 minutes.

i agree, its not a hack. its a feature.

McCain suffered an Amanda Marcotte moment, described as a bad Internet experience related to blogging.

haha..
wow, the 14 yr old wont know who to vote for now! :p

MySpace is to the internet what Reality TV is to television. Totally worthless and way too popular.

It’s Newsvine, not NewsVine.

Almost as bad as calling Firefox FireFox.

Give credit where it is due!!!!

Now if someone could actually get him to reverse his position …

While a fun prank, and as a US voter I’m more than happy for someone to get one over on the Republicans, I actually think this crosses an ethical (and possibly legal?) line. Effectively it’s hacking to knowingly misrepresent a political figure in a way that most Myspace users might not recognise was a joke.

Recent events have suggested that there’s an immature hacker ethos still stinking up the web; this is another, more benign, version of the same. The dignified, professional thing to do would have been to send an email.

Ben, RTFA. Nobody hacked anything. McCain’s website used a template without attribution and was also hotlinking an image. The owner of the template merely changed the image. Perfectly legal.

Ben you need perspective alignment. Effectively you are saying that a thief has more rights over use of property than the rightful owner of said property. That is what this comes down to. The rightful owner of that image manipulated that image on their own server, not on someone else’s server – there is nothing wrong with that whatsoever. The rightful owner of the property has absolutely no control over someone hotlinking that image or where that thief uses that image. The problem is that the article is indicating McCain’s site was hacked, which it clearly was not.

trevo: “The staffer may have copied the template from another MySpace profile not knowing that it was something that is “protected”.”

So it’s okay to pull someone else’s template?

I don’t think so.

I find the riff on lesbian marriage and faux support of bisexual women rather offensive. Surely a sophisticated CEO could have come up with a better fake stance. F for effort.

THIS IS AWESOME! Takes a big set to do that, I can appreciate that sort of humor.

Marilyn: I actually took the weekend to decide which “issue” to jab at McCain with. The war would have been too heavy due to his former P.O.W. status. Abortion would have also been too heavy because it deals with death. The only other major issue I could find where McCain has failed to make his true opinion clear was gay marriage so I chose that. The line about “passionate females” was designed to skirt the line between “could actually be true” and “is too bizarre to be true”. I didn’t want people to immediately think it was a hack, but at the same time, needed to make it sufficiently funny for a guy like that to say. It’s really nothing against women, believe me. It’s more about the taboo among straight men that female homosexuality is “hot” and male is “not”. Anyway, like I said… not meant to offend. Apologies if it did.

Not sure if Techcrunch is the appropriate platform for these sort of hacks and political statemenets. Wasnt it supposed to be about profiling startups…

John McCain’s MySpace Page Hacked, Says He Supports Gay Marriage and Lesbian Sex…

Someone on Presidential hopeful John McCain’s staff is going to be in trouble today. They used a well known template to create his Myspace page. The template was designed by NewsVineFounder and CEO Mike Davidson. Davidson gave the template code away …

That is brutal! Awfully dirty though. Imagine if this had been done to Obama by one of his critics. There’d be an awful lot of outrage coming from the left.

I agree it’s a somewhat clever prank but also a pretty unprofessional thing to do. Mike should know better.

Of course, this is the same Mike Davidson who at the Webvisions conference last year used a video of Marc Canter’s little kids as an example of how not to market a startup, in front of a crowd of over 100 web professionals. Again, very unprofessional and lacking in judgment.

But we cannot all be Type A asholes smirking in our chairs at how clever we think we are. Whatever.

Hilarious!

http://www.thisblogisabomb.com

I wonder what McCain’s real position on gay marriage is. I know what his required position is as a republican candidate, but I wonder if he has ever stayed up at night thinking about the people that are hurt by this.

He seems to change his position on this, based on subtleties:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/07/14/mccain.marriage/
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0826initiatives26.html
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/03/29/mccain-gay-marriage/

Homophobic closet gay quite likely.

Cameron – Mike isn’t an asshole.

I believe that the prank was both funny and lacking in integrity. Yes – it is possible to hold contradictory opinions in your head.

I am guessing that the McCain campaign made a simple mistake. I don’t think the poor intern who did this was consciously choosing to steal bandwidth.

Therefore, if it were me, I would have sent an email, told them that if they don’t change the link in x hours (or minutes if you want to play hardball) that I’d change the image to be something they would NOT want up there.

Then, if it wasn’t changed in my specified time frame I’d change the image.

To ME – that’s acting with integrity. It all comes down to intentions and civility. I believe in civility when dealing with well-intentioned people, even when they make a mistake.

I believe what MiKe D. did was petty and lacking in integrity. And sure, it was pretty funny too.

“Cameron – Mike isn’t an asshole.”

I guess my opinion of Mike D. is different than yours then. My experience watching him trash people at conferences informs me otherwise. This McCain thing just reinforces it.

Of course, there are people out there who think I am an asshole, so this whole online reputation thing goes both ways.

Petty and lacking in integrity. And sure, it was pretty funny too.

Petty and lacking in integrity would also be effectively taking credit for someone else’s design work, or stealing their bandwith to due it.

Mike D. rules

“Cameron – Mike isn’t an asshole.”

Thanks Mike. The problem is, I think Cameron might be. He apparently worships Marc Canter and didn’t like the fact that I pulled up Marc’s own promotional People Aggregator video as an example of a poorly executed promo. I don’t know Marc Canter, I’ve never met him, and I’m sure he’s a smart guy, but the video was just not good at all. Cameron approached me after the session was over, told me I was out of line, and pretty much everyone at my table was wondering why he was even talking. He continued to repeat his mantra until his gas ran out and that was it. It’s the only time anyone has ever said something negative to me after I’ve gotten off stage, and people who know Cameron tell me he does that a lot, so I took it with a grain of salt.

“Petty and lacking in integrity would also be effectively taking credit for someone else’s design work, or stealing their bandwith to due it.”

Or he could have contacted the campaign nicely and asked them to give him credit. Regardless of your politics, there is a level of civility and integrity that is missing here. If they ignored his requests, then it’s a different issue altogether.

But at some point the asshole in all of us overpowers everything else and we can’t help ourselves.

Oh, and if it had been the GW Bush Myspace page I would have been behind the prank completely, since he truly deserves it.

Agree with Mike that this is not a hack. Hacking implies that somebody gained access to McCain’s MySpace account, which is not the case. I usually don’t like to comment on the journalistic integrity of headlines, but in this case the use of “hacked” seems a bit sensational.

I’m not surprised that somebody working for a campaign didn’t quite “get” the fact the images were to be hosted on his or her own server. I doubt this was intentional (and almost certainly wasn’t something McCain controlled), so regardless of what you think of McCain and his political views, doing something like this without apparently sending a note requesting that the situation be rectified and giving a reasonable amount of time to do so (a few days), just makes the CEO of NewsVine look like an unreasonable, opportunistic and less-than-ethical individual. It’s unfortunate that some people lack the decency to give others a break and will resort to acts like these without first making an attempt to handle the situation in a professional manner. At the very least, the images could have been blocked using .htaccess or taken down altogether without being used to make a political statement.

We all have our political views, but any executive should be aware that politically-related actions he or she takes will reflect on his or her company, even if those actions are taken as an individual. Should CEOs not feel free to speak out? Of course not. But just remember that whatever is said can impact the company regardless of its justification or validity. This particular situation reflects especially poorly on NewsVine in my opinion because the service (ironically) has a Code of Honor (http://www.newsvine.com/_cms/info/codeofhonor) that states:

1. Above all else, respect others. If you see disrespectful behavior, report it, rather than further inflaming the situation.
2. Before you write, seed, or comment, ask yourself if your contribution increases the strength and virtue of the community.

ah, well, I didn’t realize there was pre-existing tension between the two of you. You guys should go out for beers or something.

When you steal someone else’s bandwidth by linking to an image on their site, they are absolutely in control of what appears.

The fact that McCain is a powerful politician does not make him immune from this.

On the other hand, I doubt McCain coded his site, or had any idea that this could be done, much less that it had been done.

Lesson learned, I bet.

“It’s the only time anyone has ever said something negative to me after I’ve gotten off stage…”

You WERE out of line and I called you out on it, but at least I had the civility to do it off-stage and not in front of everyone.

Like some people I can be an asshole at times. I admit it. But I think you are out of line here as well. I don’t like McCain much but I think his campaign deserves some civility and contacting them privately about their mistake was the approach you should have taken.

Cameron Barrett says: “Oh, and if it had been the GW Bush Myspace page I would have been behind the prank completely, since he truly deserves it.”

Wow. You had the whole faux-ethical/emotional/high-ground thing going on and then you ruin it with a statement about how this is OK if it’s done to a politician YOU don’t agree with, but NOT ok in other circumstances?

For the record: I’m not a politically inclined person, I’m not anti-McCain, and no one was hurt here. If the intent here was to do damage, it is possible to encode porn as an animated gif, you know.

I wonder how many other people who lifted the graphics using the original owner’s bandwidth were surprised to find they endorsed passionate gay marriage amongst females.

This was not a hack. It goes on all the time when bandwidth is stolen and it’s much more effective than sending off a curt, snippy email cease and desist.

My guess is that by the end of today Mike’s house and the Newsvine offices will be raided by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. He will be held under anti-terrorism laws, as the story about the ‘hack’ on a presidential candidate is relayed on all the major networks. By the end of hte week Mike will be in Guantanamo Bay being personally beaten up by McCain himself, who will not bother using a phonebook.

McCain’s MySpace Page Hacked…

Just read that John McCain’s MySpace page was “hacked”. Apparently they used a free template w/out grabbing the images and putting them on their own server – so the designer of the template was footing the bill for the images served o…

Anyone who refers to this event as a website “hack” has no opinion I am interested in. Come on, at least try to use the sensational stuff correctly or it just makes you look silly…

Hey Cameron, as much as we’d like to hear more about your personal vendettas, can we get back to the topic at hand here? How about them ‘passionate females’ ;)

For the record: I do not know Cameron Barrett at all. I had never heard of him before the conference he speaks of and I have never heard of him afterwards. From my standpoint, he was a stranger that approached me after one conference with some negative words about a particular video I showed, I let him say his peace, and that was it. This comment thread is the first I’ve heard of/from him since.

In looking at the image more closely, I actually think McCain might have a basis for taking legal action. Even though the images were hosted on Mike D.’s server, he replaced them so that a message appearing to be from John McCain himself would be displayed, and even added a fake “signature” to the image to create a sense of authenticity. I’m not a lawyer, and while Mike D. has the right to post whatever he wants on his server, it would now be impossible for him to argue that he had no knowledge that these images were used on John McCain’s MySpace page and that he intended to create a fake (or fraudulent?) message that appeared to come directly from McCain. The addition of NewsVine advertising could potentially be used to show that some form of financial benefit was derived. I suppose a court could consider whether Mike D.’s right to post images on his server negates the fact that he apparently intended to create a fraudulent message that included a promotion for his company while harming McCain.

I doubt we’ll see a lawsuit over this, but it seems like there might be some valid grounds for one, and use of this “prank” to promote NewsVine might put the company at risk. Smart CEO!

@John S – watch out or yours will be next :)

@Drama – if they want to play with the tools (eg social networking), then they need to be aware of the rules (and the consequences). I feel it made both entities look kind of stupid.

But it was still kind of funny. I still think any press is good press unles you happen to be feeding rat poison to dogs and causing their kidneys to fail!

[...] MySpace doesn’t give credit to template designer…he strikes back :) John McCain’s MySpace Page Hacked All I have to say is…this seems to be the age where campaigns like Lieberman, McCain…old guys [...]

Wow, “drama” is right! We’re going to need a theatre for this one. That’s not McCain’s signature. I made sure of that. Good thinking though!

As for lawsuits, bring ‘em on. We’ll deal with whatever you’re talking about after we deal with the copyright violation. :)

Welcome to reality! Saint McCain supports a war built on lie after lie, with more lies being exposed every day (lately, the Pentagon cited some officers for “missteps” in the way they treated the death of Pat Tillman as a PR opportunity). The new world is a breath of fresh air against the old, when a few BIGSHOTS like St. McCain could be controlfreaks. It’s over, man. Geeky attitudes about legalities cannot cover hypocrisy and lies. St. McCain is over, and a few guys running everything is over, because they’re just too old and tired to keep up anymore!

Can be fixed easily; will be forgotten in (7) days.

– Good prank; but not the best.

I like to talk about stool.

I agree, the use of “hack” wasn’t correct. I changed the post.

Amy: there is no Superior Court of Social Networking. :) I agree that both entities look kind of stupid. NewsVine moreso.

Mike D.: love the sarcasm. While I don’t think this will go to court (it would be stupid), posting something that is designed to appear to be a message from McCain seems like it could be problematic. Even though you say that the signature isn’t his, does the average person know what McCain’s signature looks like? Might an average person reasonably assume that an image in cursive font with his name represents his signature?

I can’t speak to the copyright issue, but I suppose a court would have to look at a number of issues. Can you prove that they willfully and intentionally violated copyright? Can they prove that you willfully and intentionally posted images containing text designed to appear to be from McCain? What is the harm done to you if they violated your copyright? You were giving this stuff away free anyway so its economic value is questionable. What is the harm done to McCain if you are found to have fraudulently posted information purporting to be from McCain along with an advertisement for your company? I suspect the damage done to McCain would probably outweigh any damage done to you if a court was to find that some sort of violation occurred.

Again, just some hypothetical musings here. I think what you did was unprofessional and says a lot about your character, or lack of it. That’s all.

Bravo and well played, Mike!

This happens a few times each year with images a friend of mine posts to his blog, only the images are then used for eBay auctions w/o permission.

Does he alter the images? You bet he does. Every. Single. Time.

True, he could set up a blocking mechanism, but a) it becomes a cat and mouse game (Sony PSP Firmware, anyone?) and b) others could use them with permission and he’s fine with that. It’s using his bandwidth that’s the bigger issue.

Perhaps I can get him to weigh in here with the straight dope and some examples …

ick — even though this isn’t _cracking_ (it isn’t even hacking), I hope you have your affairs in order if this becomes big news. Politicians and their ilk are vicious, vicious people, and can’t stand being made to look like fools.

No one’s suing anyone over this. McCain’s staff will pretend this never happened.

This reminds me of yet another incident where Mike apparently acted like a senseless idiot and pissed of a blogger. Can’t exactly remember the blog but the blogger took a jab at Mike in return by setting up http://newswhine.com

Grow up Mike boy.

Well, I’m glad to hear that McCain’s doppelganger is in support of same-sex marriage. April Fools!

Awww well, you can’t please everybody. So far, most people are taking this as the prank that it is. Those that want to extend the situation into issues of overall character are free to. Life is too short ignore the potential humor in politics.

#66: What on earth are you talking about?

I deal with assholes every day. It’s part of the consequences of living in New York City. Mike D. would fit right in here.

But being an asshole does not excuse the fact that he behaved improperly. Marc Canter (and myself, apparently) have thick enough skin and can take whatever the assholes want to dish out but sometimes you just have to stand up to the assholes and the bullies and put them in their place.

Calling Mike D. out on his actions is still the right thing to do, regardless of whether he knows who I am or not. From other comments here it’s clear that it’s an obvious pattern of his.

I second the recommendation that Mike D. grow up.

Laf. Newswhine. Forgot about that.

The “pissed off blogger” was nice enough to document the atrocities here.

I leave it up to the Crunch’s gentle readers to decide what to make of that.

Could someone kindly explain to me how changing an image on YOUR SERVER is in any way unethical? It’s YOUR SERVER and YOUR IMAGE.

The unethical ones here are the people on McCain’s staff who were either too lazy or too stupid to copy the images to their own server instead of stealing bandwidth from the person who provided the template. It’s hilarious to see all these GOP shills trying to spin this as something other than a breach of ethics on McCain’s part.

That’s what you get for trying to be nice to Republicans – they steal from you and then whine when they get caught.

See , the thing about McCain … no one fears him. Thats an important facet of leadership. Look at it this way, would someone deface Kerry’s page , or Hillery’s page they would think 2wice.. this guy could be sitting in Guantanamo bay right now if this was a Bush,Clinton or Kennedy.. But it was McCain.

You would think he at least has a slander suit here??? I mean the guy did this intentionally to mislead his constitutes. thats pretty much text book no?

–Richard Corsale

Proper lesson…

A modern version of "get off my property" lesson to Senator McCain. While it didn’t follow the old western tradition of shooting the intruder, it is still pretty effective – and proper – lesson. Nice job Mike Davidson T…

well that is copyright infringment and we have all heard enough of that.
so give the credit where its needed
prob should send the McCain camp a bill for the bandwidth and a copy of internet for dummies

Meanwhile, important things go unattended at the state, regional, national and international level as myspace 14 year olds attempt a coup of the Presidential myspace palace.

Richard: I would say that out of all the candidates, I actually *do* fear McCain the most. The guy is military. And he’s west coast. If he were really that worked up about it, I’m sure he could have gunmen at my door within a few hours. I’m anti-guns so I don’t have one with which to defend myself.

As for slander, slander must be spoken so you’re probably talking about libel, which is written. But both slander and libel require malice… none of which was present here. I hope McCain’s MySpace page views explode from this thing and I wish him the best in Election 2008! He’s no better or worse than most other candidates (in my opinion), and he’s probably no better off or worse off after this.

MySpace And Politics Don’t Mix…

Attempts have been made before. Politicians trying to connect with younger generations. They dress down. They remove neckties for college crowds. They don threads of their alma maters at outdoor events. Some have even gone wind surfing and have done so…

Lol they took it down…No image now..not even the standard one o.O

Mike: Ehh your right, I mean he finally got some traffic to his profile :)

hey mike:

to me, those stupid “if” apologies are even more obnoxious than the careless homophobia.

obviously you made mistake with the careless easily offensive to many remark. own it. or not, but don’t do the “if” thing: it is lame.

I think there are two issues here. First Mike D. should have provided his template to include the images and not have his offered template link all of the image back to his servers. McCain’s campaign should have credited him, but he left the links pointing at his servers.

Secondly, common courtesy in this situation would have dictated a private message and request to fix the page.

I’ve always been a fan of using Apache directives to thwart bandwidth leechers. One of my friends did one worse and redirected all of the image requests to Goatse and then Tubgirl. *shudder*

Hmmm, I got a feeling that I know why Cameron deals with assholes every day. It’s a thing called projection.

A lot of people here are wearing their underwear waaaay too tight. Lighten up!

It WAS funny. And clever.

And it was only MySpace.

‘Immature’, ‘undignified’, ‘unprofessional’, ‘crossing ethical (and possibly legal?) lines. What was McCain, a presidential candidate, doing there anyhow? Not the most professional of images. But I’m sure he’ll survive just fine.

These campaigns spend hundreds of millions of dollars to try to control every word printed or aired about their candidates by the major media outlets, and then they allow something like this to happen. McCain shoulda hired a 14-year old to properly construct the page.

I don’t think Mike was out of line for making folks comply with his requirements for his own work.

I am fully aware that people write stuff, that other people don’t pay for and all they ask is something simple like attribution and don’t use my bandwidth.

If people fail to comply, and are consuming his resources, he has every right to do this. Blame the people who were incompetent, not the one who had his intellectual property conditions attached violated.

If I was working on a presidential site, I would at least try to be careful to make sure that everything was being used legitimately. From that to calling him an asshole, because he is calling shots on code he wrote, is asinine.

McCain Gets Social Networking Surprise…

When the creator of Sen. John McCain’s MySpace page used a graphic on someone else’s web server without credit, the owner “decided to play a small prank on the campaign this morning as retribution,” Tech Crunch reports. “Since he’s in control of …

Mike D you are the man. Job well done. Ultimately, he ripped a template and should pay the price as any ordinary citizen. Booooooooooyah!

sam, you seem to be saying that referring to homosexual females is offensive. Why is that? And to Marilyn’s original post, where are “bisexual women” referred to anywhere?

I recognize that some people are going to get self-righteously offended at the drop of a hat, but surely there are enough people legitimately trying to oppress and demean homosexuals that it’s counterproductive to bark at someone who is clearly doing neither.

There’s also Mike D’s political statement which is way rad. Let the poeple marry. I respect that. So should Mr. McCain.

good change on the title – nothing like a ‘too far’ out there title to get some digg love. but that seems the norm ’round here.

get what you can in traffic and linkages, then change the title (make no edits to the post explaining the change)

Cameron, for a second I was excited because I thought you were the cool Cameron who started blogdex.net back a few years ago, but alas, you’re definitely not him. Too bad, he’s a nice guy.

@josh

That blog looks awesome.

Mike, this was actually a good “reverse hack” – you should have change the title to ride “Reserve hack–after-all they (Myspace account) was using images/ template without proper attribution. So Retribution kicks in !!

Kudo’s to Davidson !!

hahaha This post just gave me a chuckle!. What a nice way to show people that hotlinking is not only bad, it can create big problems!

- Avi

Sure, I am an asshole sometimes. I’ve admitted it before and I’ll admit it again. We are all assholes in some micro level.

But that does not excuse Mike D. from using common courtesy in this situation, which I would hope most people would engage in if they were in Mike’s shoes.

The McCain campaign made a mistake, which is a pretty forgivable offense. To do this to them without notice is not very funny and not deserved.

I’m not saying Mike D. needs to apologize to anyone, but I do think he needs to look himself in the mirror and realize the kind of Hell he just put someone in the McCain camp thorugh today.

A private message to the campaign asking for credit should have been the correct solution. The wrong solution is using their mistake to market your startup and make yourself look like a clever-asshole/hero to those who hate McCain.

Some of you have some very simple minded ideas about theft.

I hope someone steals something from your house. When you call the police tell them to find the person who stole your stuff so you can write them strongly worded letter to return your items before they pawn them. Oh wait you wouldnt do that huh? Youd have them arrested wouldnt you? Yeah I thought so.

Tech News for 3/27/2007…

Here are some tech news worth reading.
Web Services Coming To Twitter Twitter, a social network in which users text message Twitter and people can see what they are doing, will be offering web services soon. Yee hah, guess I won’t use any of that…

Too bad he didn’t include a photoshopped image of mr. McCain leisurely strolling around Baghdad (It’s safe to walk around some parts of Baghdad- J.M.).

“Look ma, some kindly kidnappers. And kids over there have a look-see. aww, it’s a death squad. What a great war!”

GGGREEAAAAT!… Applauds to Mike Davidson

Either McCain’s MySpace Page Has Been Hacked, or He’s Taking “Straight Talk” to a New Level…

TechCrunch has the details. The lesson — don’t annoy a guy who can wreck your online presence…in this case someone who has control over your site’s appearance because you’ve been “borrowing” images hosted on h…

I think Mike got paid to do it.

It fits common paranoia about Republican tactics. What an inventive way to generate massive attention for your lame attempt to reach out to your great grand kids. Everybody wins.

The National Review totally ganked your post.

http://media.nationalreview.com/post/?q=N2I1YTg5NWFiMzZiMjk2NDk0NWJhOTUzM2I0YmU2YmE=

Those who are complaining that what he did was wrong because McCain’s staffer may have copied the template from another MySpace page are missing something very important that invalidates your argument completely: ANYTHING YOU CREATE IS COPYRIGHTED. Simply copying someone else’s template layout for your own purposes without permission is a breach of federal copyright law. What this staffer did, whether they did it by not complying with the guy’s wishes or by copying it from someone else’s page, is a violation of federal law.

– “I’m not saying Mike D. needs to apologize to anyone, but I do think he needs to look himself in the mirror and realize the kind of Hell he just put someone in the McCain camp thorugh today.”

I’m no Brad Pitt, so mirror glances are only done out of necessity (e.g. brushing hair, shaving, etc), but I think this may be a good test for the young staffer and the campaign itself. If they think a puny little MySpace prank 20 months before the election is “Hell” to deal with, then they have no idea what they are in for as the election gets closer. Ask yourself this question: Is it possible for the McCain camp to turn this into a positive (if it isn’t already)? You bet it is. And a good campaign will. Go McCain! Kudos to you and your staff as you use this attention for your longterm benefit.

I use Mike’s template. The instructions were very clear about replacing the placeholder images with your own. And the page design credit to Mike WAS BUILT IN TO THE CODE.

This isn’t simply “Oh, he probably didn’t know, territory.” The staffer used the images despite instructions, but took the time to DELETE the page design credit to Mike.

And anyone who thinks that changing images on your own server is somehow unethical probably also believes that the web is a bunch of intertubes delivered on trucks.

BFD, it was a practical joke. All you petty complainers get over it. Nobody has a frikkin sense of humor any more.

All politics aside, I thought this was a great jab. To those who think this can be used as a basis for a lawsuit, I believe you are incorrect. As a public figure, Sen McCain is open for scrutiny and can be satirized in any variety of ways without technically violating slander laws. In essence, Sen McCain’s staff (probably unwhittingly) stole money from Mike D by using badwidth he was not compensating the owner for. Now, while it would have been kind of Mike to simply send them a cease and desist notice, it is my experience that issuing these types of letters rarely acheives the desired effect. It is his prerogative to change these images as he wishes, just as it was a perfectly reasonable option for McCain’s team to copy said images and host them theirselves.

All in all, this was a silly, comical prank meant to amuse and not slander. In no way is Sen McCain actually injured by this, except possibly by exposing that his staff is not technically competent enough to avoid opening him up to embarassment.

John McCain’s MySpace Page Hacked…

Here is a tasty nugget I picked up over @ tech crunch. John McCain’s myspace page was hacked, er… “enhanced” when his staff used a profile template designed by Mike Davidson.
Mike Davidson gives out the myspace profiles for fre…

I give it an 8/10.

Whatever you Think don’t say it in Ink
Inka Dinka Do

Now repeat after me; take two deep breaths and contact a lawyer before doing something that might hurt another parties property or reputation. If you think you are the damaged party even more so, call your lawyer before you retaliate. They may tell you to do nothing and avoid litigation. That is their job.

AWESOME…..well done.

josh:

no, that was not what i was referring to. i refer to mike d.’s “if i offended anyone” lame cop-out. the “if” apology is no apology at all. when you use the “if i offended” it means nothing. “i’m sorry THAT i caused offense” is sincere. you acknowledge that you’ve made an error. the “if” thing is lame.

sam: I think conditional apologies are lame, too. I remember discussing this when Tim Hardaway gave his post-”I hate gay people” apology. But I think whether it’s bad or not is highly contingent on whether an apology is warranted or not. Obviously what Hardaway said was inherently offensive, and it required a real apology. I don’t think Mike’s fake McCain quote is offensive at all, so even a lame apology seems unwarranted.

Re: comment # 63. I think Joe means me. I occasionally tweak my .htaccess to change the images MySpace nuts think they’re posting to pictures of me dressed as Santa clause. http://www.dancentury.com/leisure/badsanta.html I stopped recently because the MySpace people actually like it — like wraslin’ a pig — you get dirty and the pig likes it. I’ve also changes images on Ebay auctions — that’s more fun actually.

No live examples, but I recommend making a 1024 x 1024 image (or larger) and setting your .htaccess to send it, and then blowing apart the already blown apart MySpace landscape.

Time To Repeal McCain-Feingold?…

The Club for Growth thinks so.
McCain-Feingold turned five years old today, and the political process is not one iota better than it was before John McCain launched his crusade on the political stage. In honor of its five-year anniversary, the Club for…

That’s funny.

lifeofthemind, swapping out an image on your own server to say “I announce…” is not doing anything to damage another party’s reputation. I can announce support of gay marriage all day long. It’s not my fault if somebody else hot-links my statement (or in this case, the folks at newsvine)…

I find it more disturbing that anyone over the age of 16 would have a MySpace page.

ph
Intent matters. If you place it on your server for the purpose of hurting someone who is innocently and unintentionally using that image then yes you are responsible. Look, say someone on life support draws power from a line on your property and they accidentally hire an incompetent or unlicensed electrician who draws from your account. You are being hurt and can demand that they fix the wiring and pay your costs. If you deliberately damage the line for the sole purpose of affecting them, then you are responsible for what happens.

McCain is a public figure with less protection in America than most of us. It still is a bad idea to deliberately hurt people.

Last comment,
It would have been OK if the image had been simply deleted or replaced with a very official looking non-fraudulent notice that the image hosted at server X has been removed, please contact (contact follows) for further information.

Two things: sam — Yes, the apology is exactly as you state… an apology *that* anyone was offended. It’s perfectly ok to apologize for any unintended effects your free speech has on people without going so far as to take it back. There are much worse things out there to be seriously offended about (e.g. hate speech).

lifeofthemind: As I stated before, McCain’s camp should use this for their own benefit. I’ve never said anything bad about the guy, I’m not looking to prosecute him for copyright violations or bandwidth theft, and all this did was give him a wave of press and traffic — with which his campaign can do whatever they want. I’ll go on a talk show with the guy and we can talk about gay marriage for an hour if he wants.

Aren’t people forgetting something? Screw netiquette!

What about the fact that McCain – desperately trying to convince Republicans he’s a big enough asshole – is using the tried and true tactic of using gay people as a poitical football. So someone called him out on it? Good for them, regardless of whether it was “ethical” for the senior-blogosphere-coordinator-nerd to uplink his hyperdrive to the image mainframe…or whatever you guys are talking about.

You get what you pay for.

This is awesome, I mean the power of social networks … There is a shift underway from few-to-many to many-to-many publishing models resulting in an explosion of consumer-generated media. 44% of Internet users are content creators (PEW), and an increasing ratio of search engine’s top results are now user-authored content. Brand owners are losing control over their message. The release of this anti Hillary Clinton video on YouTube clearly demonstrates it is also true for politicians.

You might as well be proactive and setup your own MySpace, LinkedIn, PreFound, ZoomInfo and other social networks profiles. Andy Beal’s got a long list of advice on how to track Internet sentiment and manage reputations online. Unfortunately, after email and search, this all also sounds like an invitation for some to seed and “spam” more content, frankly making discriminating between spontaneous consumer-to-consumer communications and planted opinions a challenge.

I discover a pickpocket is repeatably reaching into my pocket and stealing money from me. What do I do?

1) Write a letter to the thief asking him to stop.
2) Securely lock my pocket.
3) Replace all the coins with slugs with funny pictures on them.
4) Grab his hand and call the police.

Well?

It gave me a good chuckle. I don’t really see it as out of line either. Michael could’ve put whatever he wanted on that image and he chose a pretty mild, but funny thing to say. I guess people just like being offended sometimes.

I heard that he also is in favor of partial birth abortions and pro-Iraq war as well. What an animal.

Hilarious… I think it’s called a “fixation,” dude.

“But at some point the asshole in all of us overpowers everything else and we can’t help ourselves.”

“Sure, I am an asshole sometimes. I’ve admitted it before and I’ll admit it again. We are all assholes in some micro level.”

“I deal with assholes every day. It’s part of the consequences of living in New York City. Mike D. would fit right in here.”

“like some people I can be an asshole at times. I admit it. But I think you are out of line here as well. I don’t like McCain much but I think his campaign deserves some civility and contacting them privately about their mistake was the approach you should have taken.”

AND IMHO… some people can be douchebags and assholes at the same time. Like folks who think hotlinking is ok cause everyone’s doin it… and the lazy websters that can’t insert the couple lines of code that would prevent it…

@90 awesome job http://www.newswhine.com :)

John McCain lesbo-chic , o l’arte del ringraziare…

Quando si usa qualcosa messa a disposizione da altri , sarebbe buona educazione ringraziare. questa regola vale anche e soprattutto su Internet, dove è sufficiente scrivere una minuscola righina di “……

Good Lord.

This is the first time I’ve spent any time at Tech Crunch … and I find it amazing that people are fixated on attacking Mike when it was his property (intellectual and otherwise) that was stolen.

There’s the “this act makes Mike an asshole but it would have been OK if the MySpace account was GWB” inconsistent argument (huh?) … the Mike’s an asshole because of something that happened back with Newsvine was private beta (huh?) … the “it’s only code” argument (from someone who must not be a creative of any type).

Ack.

One of the first things I teach students is the perils of bandwidth theft. And I won’t allow images to be posted in my forum at USPolitics.About.com if they reside on someone else’s server … because it’s bandwidth theft. Over time, those pennies can add up.

As to ethics … Mike’s ethics were on the table when he deconstructed the MySpace design: “What we really want to do here is simply decrappify our home page as much as we can without violating the Terms of Use…” [Wow -> Mike, you should be teaching advanced CSS design!]

It was a prank appropriate to the audience for the web site. That’s what made it was funny.

Get a life, folks!

1) The McCain camp gets what it deserves. A lot of ppl were apoligizing that they didn’t know they aren’t supposed to inline images. If they don’t know that – they shouldn’t be on the the web. Hire some competent CS majors. I’m sick of these people getting on the web “to be cool”. It does not give them cred, it destroys it.

2) On a related note. I don’t think the myspace crowd is old enough to be voting anyway.

John McCain ‘Endorses’ Gay Marriage on MySpace…

For a brief time, Senator John McCain’s MySpace page contained a message endorsing gay marriage:
Today I announce that I have reversed my position and come out in full support of gay marriage . . . particularly marriage between two passionate fem…

i’d bet that before this happened the same guy/girl responsible for thefting the template wouldn’t have hesitated a second to put somewhere on their resume that they “designed” john mccain’s myspace page.

What is sad is that if this had been Obama or Hillary it would have been frontpage news with a headline that said “Hillary/Obama Caught Stealing Intellectual Property” Instead people are talking about how McCain is a victim. McCain is a tool, he changes positions more often than a porn star. Mike did him a favor by helping him change positions once again without even having to think about it.

Trevo:
“But what I find ironic with all these comments who accuse McCain’s campaign of ‘stealing’ are these are the EXACT people who think stealing music is okay and everything Web2.0 should be free.”

Except that McCain, as a United States Senator, is one of the people that has the power to declare “limited” – as used in the Constitution in regard to copyright protection – as meaning “two average US lifetimes”. Copyright laws are supposed to be to encourage innovation; however, McCain and his buddies have extended the laws to encourage large businesses to choke innovation to death. If McCain supported a 35-year copyright instead of a 100- to 150-year copyright, you might have, at best, a weak argument. As it is, you have none.

===================

Drama 2.0:
“In looking at the image more closely, I actually think McCain might have a basis for taking legal action. Even though the images were hosted on Mike D.’s server, he replaced them so that a message appearing to be from John McCain himself would be displayed, and even added a fake “signature””

Except the signature only says “John”, not “John McCain”, and certainly not “John McCain, U.S.S.” Further, McCain would have to admit to a criminal offense in order to establish any standing whatsoever for the civil matter; not really a great strategy. The graphic also shows a postmark, and Senators do not use postmarks, they use their signatures (it’s called “franking”.)

“You were giving this stuff away free anyway so its economic value is questionable.”

False. He states he extended a license, the terms of which were violated in at least two ways by the McCain campaign – they failed to notify him, and they did not host the images on their own server. In any event, copyright subsists from creation regardless of explicit or implicit economic value; perhaps you are confusing copyright law with patent law.

“I think what you did was unprofessional and says a lot about your character, or lack of it.”

When you bring it down to the level of ad hominems, what does that say about your argument? As the old legal maxim goes, “If the facts are against you, argue the law; if the law is against you, argue the facts; if both are against you, scream at your adversary.”

[...] Get the Full Story [...]

[...] of the template thanks to the fact that they were even using images hosted by Davidson. More on it here and/or here. Posted by bif Filed in [...]

John McCain is getting more and more senile and/or demented with every statement he makes or action he takes. He needs to either drop out of the race or just plain drop dead, whichever is preferable for both him, the country and the world.

[...] It’s Official: Senator John McCain Supports Gay Marriage – View his Myspace Profile Or, was it? Apparently, John McCain’s Myspace profile uses a free template by newsvine, but they did not copy down the images, instead hotlinking it back to newsvine’s servers. So, what newsvine did was they replaced the image with the one you see above. For the whole article read here. [...]

So McCain should get a pass for stealing bandwidth and pirating someone else’s work, but he’s owed “courtesy” and politeness from the person whose work was stolen?

Gotta love those GOP-style “ethics” huh?

Great job, I would have done the same. It was an easy target though, wasn’t it?

Each and every candidate, regardless of party affiliation should suffer such a humiliation until they LEARN how the Internet, which they so blindly and blithely attempt to regulate and control, actually WORKS!

The Internet, children, is not a place for lackeys and flunkies , despite how it
appears on MySpace. You have to have at least 2-brain cells to rub
together to use it, which McCain’s “Intarwebtube Team” just demonstrated they don’t have.

How about putting some of those millions in the campaign war chest into a freakin’ community college course on web
design and Internet literacy for your staffers John?

IMNSHO, they’re getting off light. Really light. I probably would have
done Goatse.cx myself, but that’s just me.

A. This is not a hack. Not by any strech, or any interpretation you want to use.

B. Let’s assume some politician is going to break into my house and steal a large sign I happen to have and use it for his campaign. Who here is going to argue that I am being unethical or unlawful if, before the politician gets in, I change the text of the sign to read, “I am a sign-stealing weenie, do not vote for me.” and the bonehead politician goes ahead and steals it and uses it??
That is exactly what occured here. (the before/after aspect has no meaning in the context of the net, wherein space and time have no meaning at all, the silly point, “but this occured after” [said politician STOLE the image] is utterly moot)

People making some claim that anything innapropriate occured here display such a gross ignorance of the topic at hand that they really have no business taking part in it. Yes, could a good lawyer do something with this, absolutely. That is not my point. I am making the point that the argument that *anything* inappropriate occured is ignorant and assinine. He STOLE the freaking thing. It BELONGED to someone else. If the owner wants to do something with the image, what crime is there? It suddenly becomes a crime because someone else has stolen the image? Rediculous on numerous levels.

McCain got off easy. I would have used Tubgirl. The people whining about Mike’s showing ‘disrespect’ to McCain are giving the impression that they believe that the Net is Ted Steven’s “bunch of tubes”… and those of you who whine who are employed professionally in IT-related jobs are impacting your own professional reputations. You don’t want potential clients looking at one of your posts and saying “this person is a pompus idiot”.

There is no contract, express or implied between a person stealing images off a website and the owner of the website which would preclude the site owner substituting any content he pleases for whatever the bandwidth thief thought he was ripping off.

McCain got what he deserved. After all, he voted for the law that makes theft on the internet a crime. And what do we find? He is committing theft on the internet.

The argument that it was “some staffer” doesn’t hold water: if I get Vito (a staffer) to knock over a bank, it is still theft and I’m in trouble.

For the “holier than thou”, I’d say he got of light. This could have been far worse than “hot gril on gril”.

Feloneous

a day late 2 dollars short so much ado bout nothing lol j-mac got owned big deal good for you mike d as for those saying no fair …………….g3t a l1f3 noobs

Note that McCain has only managed to collect 3014 friends… Okay, I have far fewer friends there (88 and growing daily), but I joined MySpace on March 7 and am not a major political figure but simply an unknown artist. On the other hand, he joined MySpace some time in February and is a very public public figure.

The McCain profile template has been changed! Now it looks real messy, and the comments in black fonts are partly illegible against the black background! I see an omen there… :)

[...] In the 13 hours before McCain’s team twigged and pulled the plug on the image, it was on TechCrunch & Slashdot, all round the world and even made it onto [...]

Just went over to the MySpace site. Now the comment section has anti-McCain editorial cartoons from Mike Lukovich (sp?) and the Red Meat strip as well. This on top of the shitty layout.

They really should hire somebody better to do their maintenance.

Video coverage of the prank via NBC affiliate KING 5 is now online.

Having the benefit of seeing this simultaneously with all of the comments (saving the assholity symposium for more serious study later), it seems the perfect combination of prankery/humor/political pointmaking and spanking would have been replacing the linked image with a simple notice stating

“This web page links to a copyrighted image here without permission and in violation of the terms of agreement and of US copyright law” etc.

That way nobody is offended, it’s still a bit funny, (maybe more than a bit to those who don’t like McCain’s copyright position), and the discussion of the web site will be just as much “is the McCain campaign doing illegal stuff?” as “funny or not funny?”

Interesting little tidbit. Happened to see this little prank on the Daily Show today. Didn’t get a good shot of your url on there, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t on the show.

Mike D, Cameron:

You guys need to get a room and take your [love] conversation offline. Looks like there are a lot of suppressed feelings…

–Bob

[...] Original story and screenshots here. [...]

[...] John McCain’s MySpace Page “Enhanced” (TechCrunch, via the del.icio.us heh tag) [...]

Bob Dingwell: Thanks. Not interested though. I have no bad feelings towards Cameron as I really don’t know the guy at all. After reading a lot of comment threads on TechCrunch recently though, I have a whole new respect for Mike A’s ability not to get mad at his commenters. I mean, my blog averages probably 40 or 50 comments per post — sometimes more — and everything just seems so civil most of the time.

I LIKE CHICKEN CHEESE OOOOOLALALLA

does anyone know of the “Fester Yatch club”, the founder and story of
how it was accepted by the other yatch clubs around the states, so that
Fester’s members got benefits at the other clubs ??????

John McCain’s MySpace Hacked…

Someone at John McCain’s campaign site made a little bit of an internet faux-pas, and got this result to show for it.  Here we see a before / after example of why not to break the rules.
The story is that the McCain minion used a MySpace templ…

[...] from the same monochrome blandness as his campaign website. At least he has recovered from the enhancement from last week. McCain’s page encourages people to “Spread the word!” It then [...]

[...] Hacking McCain Bwahahahaha! This is priceless! Be sure to read the whole thing, they have before and after pics of it. Too Funny! John McCain’s MySpace Page “Enhanced” [...]

Wait lol that is too funny. I had heard about this, but never realized it was the ceo of newsvine that’s just too great.

[...] really hard to say much about this beyond: wow, that’ll teach ‘em. It does go to show how easily one can accidentally run [...]

[...] Presence and Instant Messaging on Twitter John Edwards was one of the first to have a Twitter profile, which is frequently updated. It is suspected that it is updated by one of his aids. Since then other candidates have jumped on the twitter bandwagon -March 07 John McCain’s MySpace Hacked A vandal “enhanced” John McCain’s myspace profile: “Davidson decided to play a small prank on the campaign this morning as retribution. Since he’s in control of some of the images on the site, he replaced one that shows contact information with a statement:” -reports TechCrunch, March 07 [...]

[...] the practice- change the image on the host end to something less desirable, such as happened to John McCain last [...]

[...] or others. Using online marketing in a campaign is not newsworthy, but mistakes like the hacking of John McCain’s MySpace page or a “Macaca moment” are. This week though I saw videos from two candidates that clearly showed [...]

adult hardcore tv…

John McCain’s MySpace Page “Enhanced”…

[...] an image hosted on another person’s site. When that person switched the image to one stating McCain had reversed his position on gay marriage, the change was reflected on McCain’s page and he was left [...]

[...] ג’ון מק’קין, מועמד לנשיאות ארצות הברית, ביצע קישור חם ואיפשר למארח התמונה לשנות את התוכן כך שהודבק בעמוד [...]

[...] pages messed with in ways that border on hacking. Last March John McCain found his MySpace page inadvertently promoting a position he had not officially taken. MySpace Loading information about [...]

[...] of the most high profile cases of such content replacement came from John McCain’s run-in with MySpace profile creation. His staff failed to use images from their own servers. When the owner of the image McCain used [...]

[...] Die steigende Popularität der Social Networks wird natürlich auch von den Kandidaten benutzt. Diese Seiten sorgen dafür, dass die menschliche Seite der Kandidaten zum tragen kommt. Teilweise persönliche Dinge wie Vorlieben und Abneigungen werden dargestellt und die Nutzer können sich mit ihrem Kandidaten “vernetzen”. Obama schafft es so z. B. bei Facebook auf über eine halbe Million Anhänger. John McCain benutzt auch MySpace, scheint hier aber ein wenig glückliches Händchen zu haben. [...]

[...] More… [...]

The Global Geek Podcast #045 :: Thunderbirds are Go!…

This week on the show we are joined by Tim King again, have a few laughs and find out if Dr Evil survives.
Tech headlines this week feature .xxx domain rejection; again. China bans booty calls, don’t even think about sending a picture either! Als…

[...] campaign made no stipulations on the questions I could ask (and they didn’t even hold this against us). He spoke frankly and clearly outlined his position on a number of key technology [...]

[...] hierbei leider nicht um einen vernunftbegabten Gesinnungswandel McCains, sondern um den cleveren Hack des [...]

obama killing you in the race

good

[...] owner of the site can remove, move or alter the files as they wish. This can cause dead links or, as the McCain campaign found, a great deal of [...]

[...] switching it out for a different image if the request shows your site as the referrer (check out John McCain’s MySpace Page “Enhanced” for a classic example of [...]

[...] From TechCrunch: They used a well known template to create his Myspace page. The template was designed by [...]

[...] switching it out for a different image if the request shows your site as the referrer (check out John McCain’s MySpace Page “Enhanced” for a classic example of [...]

Ha. You can’t just copy someone elses myspace layout, you have to get the actual CODE from the author, and by doing that you have to agree NOT to use their servers. Whoever made his profile just ignored this and did it anyways, so they got what they deserved.

I’ve seen worse.

that is actually pretty hilarious. hacked??

[...] including a quite disturbing one in the second). Presidential hopeful John McCain ran into some trouble on his MySpace page this past [...]

Different people have different opinions.
This kind of template may be useful.

[...] What about custom colors and graphics? You can do those also it’s not that difficult and again you don’t need any of those cheesy websites providing them. (You will need to host the images on your main website, another blog) The grand thing about pages on the internet is that you can look at the code and learn how to use it for you site. Or steal it for you own but I know you won’t do that right? A good tutorial on customization is at MikesIndustries.com but make sure you heed his advice by changing the image links and giving him a little credit for the code or this could happen. [...]

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