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John McCain's MySpace Page "Pranked"
Several readers let us know about a little problem with presidential hopeful John McCain's MySpace page. Looks as though some staffer didn't read the fine print of the "credit" clause when selecting a template for the page. The template author and CEO of Newsvine, Mike Davidson, noticed this and didn't care too much. But the McCain page was pulling an image from Davidson's site, costing him bandwidth every time someone visited the candidate's MySpace page. So Davidson changed the image in question to read: "Today I announce that I have reversed my position and come out in full support of gay marriage... particularly marriage between two passionate females." Here is Davidson's account of the "immaculate hack".
The hacked version of the image was only up for about two hours before it was taken down. Of course, it's now been replaced with an invitation to "Add to Gorup [sic]".
Will the incompetence ever end?
The Slashdot Limerick
Intentionally deceiving people isn't fraud, and isn't illegal. Deceiving someone to gain something from them would be fraud.
This story is very similar to a much older /. story from Sept. 3, 2005: Fuddruckers Called Out on Hotlinking.
.htaccess file to redirect the traffic from the Fuddruckers site to a page which bashed the Fuddruckers webmaster and opened numerous popups which contained graphic pictures of slaughter houses. Making matters worse for Fuddruckers was the fact that this all occurred during the Labor Day weekend, so the content wasn't removed for a few days.
For those of you out there who don't want to RTF/.A, the children's section of the Fuddruckers website was pwned because they inline linked a flash game. The game's developer set his
Navicula hydraulica plena anguilarum est. Omnes castelli tuus nostri sunt. Ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
The war of the world's radio broadcast had messages both before and after it stating that it was a play - not news. The problem was that some people tuned in during the middle and were extremely gullible.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Google Cache have the version with the hotlinked picture if anyone want to see how it lookedy space.com/johnmccain
http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:http://www.m
If you don't want your images embedded in other people's pages, why don't you just add alien referrer blocking to the .htaccess in your root folder?
While I don't think this is technically illegal, there is the fact that he intentionally replaced it with an image that was directly related to McCain's character. Intent goes a long way in US courts. Had he replaced it with a general image not directly related to McCain (Goatse?) than he'd probably stand a better chance if this does make it in front of a Judge.
I've just found (due to absentmindedly clicking the link without reading the description) that in Firefox on OS X, it causes both the browser and the OS X interface to become unresponsive. I ended up having to reboot the computer to get it back to working order.
You bet they can come up with some crime that vaguely matches this though.
Uh. No, you really can't. You also can't come up with a crime that vaguely resembles my drinking coffee in the morning.
Anti-graffiti laws maybe, who knows?
Oy. First off, graffiti is illegal in less than a quarter of the United States, and in those places where it is illegal, it's almost always simply illegal on public property. There are almost no points in the United States where graffiti on private property is illegal. That's why almost all graffiti cases are actually tried as destruction of private property - graffiti isn't illegal.
Why is the difference important? Well, for one, destruction of private property is illegal, but it's not criminal; unless there's something particular about the content of the graffito, the person can't be sent to jail except overnight holding, there's a limit on the fine that can be laid, and they're not liable for concommitant damage. So, for example, if an artist painted a beautiful graffito painting on the side of a building, and some jerk was staring at it instead of driving and got into a wreck that killed a kid, the artist would not be accessory to manslaughter.
Graffiti involves you doing something to someone else's things, not your own. The reason you can't come up with a sensible example is because there isn't one. The legal system isn't a question of who can come up with the biggest stretch, and believe it or not, a judge is well within their rights to say "fuck off, that's not what that law means." In fact, that's their purpose, and they do that all the time.
What a judge cannot do is send you to jail without a damned good reason. If you appeal a judge's ruling and it gets overturned, circuit court is required to make a decision that they never seem to teach you about at the SlashDot J Fakespert Building of Almost Law at the NBC campus of the University of Law and Order: SVU. (That's right, I'm making fun of your channel 4 law degree. Maybe you can convince a judge that I'm putting a graffito on SlashDot?) Specifically, that decision is whether to overturn with or without prejudice.
Maybe you should get on http://notacollegeofjurisprudence.wikipedia.net/ and track down just what happens to a judge when their rulings are overturned with prejudice? The actual count varies from state to state, but in Pennsylvania it's three a year, and in Washington DC it's zero tolerance.
A bit of creativity and liberal use of words and you can easily make this a crime.
Really? Go right ahead: we're listening. Show us something a little less ridiculous than laws designed to keep city signs legible. Or did you think graffiti laws were there to keep people from painting on things?
Have a look through your local law library for a 1970s New York City block of precedent that was taken state then national by Andy Warhol, surrounding the then-little-known street artist Jean Michel Basquiat. We've actually gone through this on walls in public, where Basquiat intentionally took it to a senator in public. The wall didn't belong to Basquiat, and Basquiat wasn't having a good old josh like Mr. Davidson is. The senator tried a bunch of stuff to get it taken down, including leaning with all his senatorial might. He got nowhere. Basquiat died a few
Basquiat died several years later on the wrong end of a heroin needle, a free man. At that time, most of America learned that paranoia does not generate legal fault. Our founding fathers went way, way out of their way to make what you're describing fundamentally impossible, and they did a beautiful job of it. Clueful legal commentators understand and respect that.
And please have the sense to stop pretending to grok the law. Lawrence Lessig you are not.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
Two words: Randall Schwartz.
Yes, I know his conviction was eventually overturned, but only after he spent ungodly sums of money defending his good name.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Took about 25 seconds to load in Safari on my system, tying up Safari pretty good in the process. But things were fine once it was done and other programs continued to respond normally throughout. And they said I'd never use dual processors -- apparently they didn't know my browsing habits.
Oh really? He openly campaigned for banning gay marriage in his state of Arizona.
t itle=mccain_is_star_of_proposition_107_tv_com&more =1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1&blogtype=Pluggedin
http://www.azcentral.com/blogs/index.php?blog=85&
Sounds like he supports taking away my rights to me. I'm sure glad to have friends like him running for president. I'd hate to see what my enemies would do.
Firefox 2.0.0.3 on Windows says there's an error with the image and won't display it