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".

Comments

Let's see how McCain handles it

[JudeanPeople'sFront]

If he is a good politician, he should make fun of the whole thing (and gain a few votes :)

Re:Let's see how McCain handles it

[Anonymous Coward]

If he is a good politician, he should make fun of the whole thing (and gain a few votes :)

If McCain is a good politician and decent human being, he should come out in support of gay marriage.

Re:Let's see how McCain handles it

[Sanguis Mortuum]

"Good politician" and "decent human being" are mutually exclusive...

Graphic shoulda been a DMCA takedown notice.

[Anonymous Coward]

They did not credit me for the template, even though the template explicitly requested credit.

Hmm. Sounds like someone broke a software license. Seems awful close to piracy. Someone call Orrin Hatch!

This could majorly backfire

[donscarletti]

How long until Mr Davidson gets prosecuted by some lawyer working for McCain who hasn't realised that laughing along with the joke is a lot more dignified than litigation? With the amount the average judge knows about the internet, he could actually be imprisoned for this if some arsehole in a suit and tie crys loud enough. As simple as the case may seem to us, to the general public, defacing a site is illegal hacking, nomatter how it is done and no doubt McCain could get a clueless PHB to testify to that as an "expert witness" if he wanted to.

Re:This could majorly backfire

[chanrobi]

If you'd even bothered to actually to read the TFA it says this

simply replace my own sample image on my server with a newly created sample on my server There is no "hacking" involved unlike what the title suggests. The image on McCains page was hotlinked off his site and he simply changed it to something else.

Re:This could majorly backfire

[whathappenedtomonday]

defacing a site is illegal hacking

Huh? From the fine summary: "the McCain page was pulling an image from Davidson's site" - how can it be illegal to change the contents of your own website? How could this even be called 'hacking'? If you pull graphics from other websites, prepare to get what you deserve! It says "Pranked" instead of "Hacked" in the summary title for a reason.

I think he did a great prank and I laughed my ass off - there are some funny comments, too:
> Jeff Croft
> Mike, your testicals are very, very large

>> Mike D.
>> Thank you. Please spellcheck your genitalia references though. :)

Re:This could majorly backfire

[Ed Avis]

Yes - but don't expect any common sense from the legal system in anything related to computers or (shiver) 'hacking'.

Re:This could majorly backfire

[ArsenneLupin]

There is no "hacking" involved unlike what the title suggests. The image on McCains page was hotlinked off his site and he simply changed it to something else. Exactly. But would the general public and some random computer-illiterate judge understand that? That was the point donscarletti was trying to make...

Re:This could majorly backfire

[kestasjk]

You bet they can come up with some crime that vaguely matches this though. Anti-graffiti laws maybe, who knows? A bit of creativity and liberal use of words and you can easily make this a crime.

Re:This could majorly backfire

[BlueTrin]

Well, it will not happen for three reasons:

• he is campaigning so it could be seen as very negative

• he modified a picture from his OWN website, it would be something very easy to explain

• the candidate was stealing bandwidth from his website and not respecting the copyright, although he can always blame the website designers he hired for the blog

Re:This could majorly backfire

[pipatron]

If you know that someone is stealing your lunch everyday, and you know who it is, and you poison the food, I'm sure that they can get you locked up for murder.

I'm sorry, but I couldn't come up with a car analogy.

Oh wait! If you set up the bomb in your car so it will explode if someone steals it, and then someone actually do steal it, thus dies, I bet they can lock you up for that too. If, however, you paint the seats, thus ruining the thief's clothes, I doubt the thief can sue you for the dry cleaning bill.

Re:This could majorly backfire

[ThosLives]

Because it's popular to do so around here, here's my attempt at an analog analogy. Let's say somebody is consistently taking paper from your stack of letterhead paper, and draining your supply of it. In frustration, you change the letterhead in the pile to read, in small print, "From the desk of Mr. Dumbass".

Unfortunately it's not like that. In the case of letterhead, the offender has the opportunity to not distribute whatever it is would require the letterhead; in the "instantly live" world of the Internet such a change immediately reaches the public with no requirement for intervention.

While I don't condone misuse of letterhead or Internet links, abusing the responsibility of respecting the way links are supposed to work (e.g., same-named links are supposed to always have the same general content) is just asking to have the freedom to choose your links taken away.

Re:This could majorly backfire

[Anonymous Coward]

If you know that someone is stealing your lunch everyday, and you know who it is, and you poison the food, I'm sure that they can get you locked up for murder.

Noone died here. If someone is stealing your beef everyday, and you replace it vegetables, do you get arrested for tricking him into eating vegetables (if we assume he didn't notice until he put it in his mouth)?

This is closer to what happened here - what the "thief" liked was replaced with something he didn't like.

Re:This could majorly backfire

[stanleypane]

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.

Re:This could majorly backfire

[whathappenedtomonday]

was changed intentionally for the specific purpose of having that image ...

...changed (for whatever reason). Which would go unnoticed, unless McCain steals the image for his own site and doesn't even bother to copy it to his webspace. Really, I see your point, but this is ridiculous! The pic was on Davidson's site, and therefore he can change it every which way he likes - without having to notify people who leech his graphics. Why he did it does not matter at all, I think. Instead, you might ask McCain why he used the pic in the first place. Remember, this was not a hack!

Re:This could majorly backfire

[gnasher719]

'' The thing a judge would (or should) look at is that the image was changed intentionally for the specific purpose of having that image appear on McCain's website. ''

The judge would also figure out that he was completely in his rights to do this.

Re:This could majorly backfire

[that this is not und]

Now just make the car a BMW and we can move this discussion to apple.slashdot.org

Re:This could majorly backfire

[whathappenedtomonday]

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.

Holy cow, imagine that! Judge: "Good thing you used the Goatse guy pic which is completely unrelated to McCain! You're free to go. And thanks for introducing me to such an interesting ho... person. I'm off to check that guy's website!"

Re:This could majorly backfire

[ThosLives]

Interesting argument.

Publishing something on the web might be more like broadcasting on the airwaves. The FCC already has rules about what you can broadcast, and there are already rules on the internet about warnings for content that you might be providing.

Considering that putting a link on the internet does not restrict who can use it, it really is a broadcast, so that means that anyone can use it.

Unless you put the images behind an https link or something else that requires authorization, the entire point of the 'net is "available to all".

I guess it isn't a nice clean issue like we'd all think. The line between knowing that if I change an image it will go unnoticed for some time and potentially have "prank" value and the responsibility for me to continuously monitor everything to which I link is not very well defined, but as I said in another post, abusing the trust to keep same-named links having constant-meaning content is just going to cause problems.

Also, if you post on the 'net you expect to get visitors. What do you mean, "too many"? Or "Hey, I didn't want *that* group of people to use up all my bandwidth!". Too bad; you should have put restrictions up to select who can use your bandwidth.

You can't have both pieces of the pie; either your information is free for whomever uses it, or you have to restrict it so only certain people can use it.

You cannot have freedom without responsibility.

Re:This could majorly backfire

[bkr1_2k]

So trespassing on my property against posted signs is okay? The article states that the code was used without crediting its author and the images were used without copying the source to the users page. According to the article both were expressly stated as "forbidden" and that if you wanted the code you should credit the author.

In either case, the guy effectively changed his signs from "no trespassing" to "no trespassing you dirty hippy" or something else. He's done no intentional harm and certainly hasn't broken any laws since he changed his own "property".

Re:This could majorly backfire

[radish]

But this is more like someone stealing gas from your car every day and putting it in their car. Then one day you buy a new car which takes diesel instead of regular gas, they steal that and it wrecks their engine. I think that even in the United States od Litigation your liability in that case is pretty minimal :)

Re:This could majorly backfire

[stonecypher]

But would the general public and some random computer-illiterate judge understand [hotlink replacement]?

1. Would someone who went to law school for eight years, then acted as a lawyer, then went back to law school for four more years, understand simple propriety and ownership? Yes.
2. It's not the judge's problem to understand things. I don't know why SlashDot thinks it is. That's the purpose of the defense attorney. The system is simple: the attorneys both understand and explain the situation as best they can, and then the judges use the information presented by the attorneys to rule.

Seriously, there's a reason for expert witnesses, and it's this: judges are there to understand the law, AND ANYTHING ELSE IS JUST ICING. Judges don't need to understand the internet, because any defense attorney worth half his salt will say "yes, and Mr. Davidson didn't change anything outside his own server," and the prosecution will be summarily laughed out of the building. If it's Wisconsin, they may have a large red "L" tattooed on their forehead first.

Re:This could majorly backfire

[nomadic]

Would someone who went to law school for eight years, then acted as a lawyer, then went back to law school for four more years, understand simple propriety and ownership? Yes.

I wouldn't trust anyone who took 8 years to finish law school to understand much of anything...

Re:This could majorly backfire

[stonecypher]

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.

Re:This could majorly backfire

[netsharc]

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/02/14/teacher_faces _jail_t.html

She was in front of a classroom full of children, malwared-IE started popping up porn ads, everybody goes nipple-gate because "she's exposing them to porn!!!".

Re:This could majorly backfire

[fredrated]

McDonalds got sued for serving extremely hot coffee that they had been warned many times could injure someone. They choose to ignore the warnings and continued to serve coffee much hotter than it needed to be, which was probably convenient for them. Personally I am glad they got their ass kicked for their hubris.

Re:This could majorly backfire

[stonecypher]

If you know that someone is stealing your lunch everyday, and you know who it is, and you poison the food, I'm sure that they can get you locked up for murder.

Wow, that's a great analogy. Now if only one person was hurt or killed in any way by a guy choosing to replace an image on his own webserver, that might be germane. What you seem to be missing is that embarrassment isn't criminal. The reason poison would be illegal is because it would kill someone. Nobody died here. Some jerk has egg on his face for being thoughtless.

If you think that's illegal, I challenge you to show how through something other than than metaphor.

Re:This could majorly backfire

[stonecypher]

The thing a judge would (or should) look at is that the image was changed intentionally for the specific purpose of having that image appear on McCain's website.

And? What, you think it's illegal because it's mean? Can you cite a law to the effect of "508.c4.232 section 6 statute 5b states that no man shall place lesbian jokes on another man's webpage" ? Maybe there's that people's doctrine entitled "Leaving shit on your web page so someone else can use it?"

I mean, I seem to be missing something here. Did someone change the law to "thou shalt not thumb thy nose at thy Politicians" while I was sleeping? Have you pointed out something illegal, or do you just think people can go to jail for being funny, or what?

Yes, a judge should be looking at that. It's freaking hilarious. That doesn't mean incarceration, though.

Re:This could majorly backfire

[corbettw]

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.

Re:This could majorly backfire

[stonecypher]

If you get arrested and spend a night in jail, have to post bail, have to retain an attorney, and take 1+ days off (or at least mornings off) to go to court, you've already lost an assload of time and money and it's a huge hassle.

If someone sues you and it's dismissed with prejudice, they pay your legal bills. Generally, for something like this, you wouldn't actually need to go to court; you'd just send your attorney. It would cost you several hours on the phone explaining the situation, and you'd be out the money temporarily until the judge said "fuck you, McCain, this is retarded, pay his lawyer." As far as an assload of money, this is fairly standard legal fare; you can get something like this covered for about four hours at $125/hour. If $500 seems like a lot to you to resolve legal disputes, I'm not sure what to say. Also, what makes you think that someone gets arrested and goes to jail for getting sued? You get something in the mail.

So yeah, you're out $500 for a few months, and you have to waste two lunch hours on the phone. So what? Big deal. You could easily take a day or two off over this. Your boss isn't going to get angry if you say "I have a US senator suing me, I need a day off to mount a defense." Chances are you'll be the office hero at the end, and you'll make more than your $500 back in free lunches before McCain would be forced to give it to you anyway. By the way, it's illegal for an employer to affect your employment status due to your court appearances, so you can skip the "but he'd fire me" right now, because if he did, you'd be a millionaire.

One of the most common misconceptions of the legal system is that being found innocent/not-guilty is free. It's not.

It is when the lawsuit is an obvious turd, and when you look at it from more than the two month perspective. Look it up. Barratry isn't legal in this country. That's why every time someone sues a big corporation, the big corporation doesn't just tie it up in counter lawsuits until the person has died of old age.

Just because you can see a way a conspiracy might work to stomp the little guy doesn't mean that's how it actually will work. Some time, try thinking about what might stop the obvious train wreck of justice from happening.

We're a nation of a third of a billion people, and I'm willing to bet you can't count your way off of one hand naming legal mishaps regarding computer ignorant judges that led to jail time in the last ten years. No system is perfect, and even a perfect system has problems when it's administrated by human beings. That our mishap rate is so low should be something you're proud of, not afraid of.

Show me a law that comes within ten nautical miles of what you suggest, making this image replacement illegal, and I will mail you a dollar and an apology. Until then, please accept this notification that you, sir, are utterly clueless as regards our system of jurisprudence. Show me another shaky metaphor or "well they might look at it this way" and you will be summarily subjected to laughter and derision. If what you cite doesn't have some legal index code at the beginning, it's a built-in larf.

Metaphor, viewpoint, simile, juxtaposition, parallel and hypothetical are all worthless in law by definition. Either you cite a code, you cite a precedent, or you stop playing dress-up in the basement and let your daddy do the lawyering. And please don't waste my time telling me that An Opinion, which is a specific thing from a judge which has concrete legal value, is the same as you giving your opinion, which seems to be largely a work of constructive fiction built on top of a miserable lack of actual legal training or comprehension.

If what you say isn't coming from a law book, don't bother hitting submit.

Re:This could majorly backfire

[TheoMurpse]

There are quite a few knowledgeable lawyers regarding the internet. I'm sure a good one would merely make this analogy:

Suppose A owns a house with a painting inside near a window. He invites people to walk by his house and view the painting through the window under the license that they credit him for anything they do with the IP of the painting (perhaps A even charges admission); this costs A some money per view, say electricity to keep a lamp turned on and lighting up the painting (this lamp only turns on when someone attempts to view the painting).

Now B has set up some really powerful telescope that is aimed directly at A's window inside his house. B then profits from having people check out A's painting through telescope. This triggers A's lamp and costs A money, of course. B does not credit A, nor does B compensate A.

A replaces the painting with another one.

Question for the court: Did A have a legal right to replace the painting in his own home without informing B (for any reason, even a bad faith reason), especially when B was costing A money AND violating the terms of the license to view which B agreed to when setting up the telescope?

Answer: Of course. Any judge can see that.

How's that analogy, does it work? And I didn't even use a car analogy!

Re:This could majorly backfire

[stonecypher]

I've never heard a satisfactory description of why what Randall Schwartz did wasn't wrong. All I've ever heard is people who say "Well can you name anything he did that *was* wrong?"

Yes, actually, I can, because I've read the court transcripts. If you're going to invoke his name, explain what you think he did. The reason you only said his name, no doubt, is because you read a page like this, which wastes time saying what he was charged with, and listing a bunch of things that aren't actually bad but that are phrased to look bad.

And yet, if you look around, at no point does that page explain what Randall did. Just what he was charged with. Did it occur to you that the reason you think he hasn't done anything wrong is because you have no idea what he did?

The legal system presumes innocense. Slashdot arguments do not.

Now, is Randall innocent? Actually, no. Should he have been penalized in the way he was? No, certainly not, but he should have been penalized. A sensible reaction to what happened would have been to fine him a couple of hundred dollars for misdemeanor vandalism, and to move on. Yes, what happened to him was bad, but you shouln't be invoking a case you don't understand in order to make a point.

By the by, what happened to Randall wasn't about ignorance regarding computers in any way. It was simple corporate abuse of the legal system. What I asked for was a fault in justice that happened because of a clueless judge . That's not the same as "find me something bad in the legal system that had a computer in it."

By the way, if the best you can do in a nation of a third of a billion people is a single twelve year old case that has nothing to do with what was actually requested, then I'd say that we as a nation are doing pretty damned well.

Re:This could majorly backfire

[Sloppy]

How can someone with as low a UID as yours be this fearfully clueless about the legal system?

Yeah, that's disturbing. Back when Slashdot only allowed current members of the state bar to register their usernames, everyone thought it would keep discussions intelligent. Now we find out that half the people forged their credentials and the other half were in the midst of ethics probes. (I always wondered about that "hot grits" guy's absurd explanation of the Interstate Commerce clause.)

As for me, yeah, I'll fess up: forged credentials. It was hilarious: the New Mexico board never did get any sort of confirmation call about me at all, even after I posted my first comment critical of Linux. People here are so naive and trusting!

Re:This could majorly backfire

[n5vb]

McCain was hotlinking to his site without permission.

He made a perfectly legitimate change to the content of his own site. The fact that the image McCain's site was hotlinking was affected in the process is not his fault. (And it's theft of service in a way, because he's stealing bandwidth from the legitimate content owner's hosting to do it.)

I'm sorry, the idea of even someone like McCain pulling a stunt like that is too ridiculous to even think about. It's been tried too many times by too many clueless asshats to have any chance of success. Especially in the current DMCA-flavored IP culture. The fact that a site owner used a particularly creative form of DRM is no excuse to try to coerce him into putting content back onto his site that he chose to remove, and quite honestly, McCain or the staffer who decided to hotlink the image in the first place could actually face a DMCA charge for it. Serve him right, he voted for the damn thing ..

(saying this mainly because the idea of being forced to keep content up on a site to support bottom feeding bandwidth leeches offends me to the very core of my being)

Re:This could majorly backfire

[Ed Avis]

the judge publicly expressed that they felt the ruling was unfair and should not have happened, but that their hands were tied due to the nature of the law.

Isn't that exactly the point? When it comes to the law you can't rely on getting a reasonable or common-sense judgement - at least in the field of computers where we have a lot of hastily passed overzealous laws to deal with 'hackers' (I would suggest some parts of the DMCA, or the British CMA as examples here).

Nobody is saying that judges are stupid and cannot apply the law properly. The convictions are sound. The criminals are guilty. The law is the law. But it isn't always reasonable. You shouldn't trust a court of law to give a sensible judgement in a computer-related case.

Re:This could majorly backfire

[Dun Malg]

Not just hot coffee. Undrinkably hot coffee capable of causing 3rd degree burns.

Coffee is supposed to be served in the range of 185 degrees! The National Coffee Association recommends coffee be brewed at "between 195-205 degrees Fahrenheit for optimal extraction" and drunk "immediately". If not drunk immediately, it should be "maintained at 180-185 degrees Fahrenheit." (Source: NCAUSA.) You cannot put 180 degree coffee in your mouth without getting burned. The NCAUSA is at best an authority on flavor. Their opinion has no bearing on safety.

Exactly what, then, did McDonald's do wrong? They put the quality of their coffee over the safety of their patrons. If they wanted to serve dangerously hot coffee, they needed to take appropriate steps to keep it off their customers. You can't serve 180 degree coffee by throwing it ina customers face either.

The plaintiffs were apparently able to document 700 cases of burns from McDonald's coffee over 10 years, or 70 burns per year. But that doesn't take into account how many cups are sold without incident. A McDonald's consultant pointed out the 700 cases in 10 years represents just 1 injury per 24 million cups sold! For every injury, no matter how severe, 23,999,999 people managed to drink their coffee without any injury whatever. Isn't that proof that the coffee is not "unreasonably dangerous"?
No. You can fire a rifle a thousand times out your car window as you drive down the street and not hit anyone. If on the 1001st shot you plug someone between the eyes, you just try arguing that it wasn't unreasonably dangerous because those first 1000 rounds didn't hit anyone.

Didn't Last Long

[0rionx]

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?

Never... er... always check your references

[Excelcia]

Any politician who thinks he's going to get votes by making a myspace account deserves whatever he gets dished. Reminds me of the clueless professor from Real Genius who thought his students like it when he would "get down, verbally" with them.

Ya.

Re:Never... er... always check your references

[Excelcia]

He's a war hero - ok, fine. What difference does that make to my point? I don't care if he was Roger Ramjet or Captain America himself, having some campaign flunky set up a myspace account to get in touch with youth is just dumb.

Re:Never... er... always check your references

[Oh the Huge Manatee]

This man was shot down in the Vietnam war and a prisoner of war at the famous / infamous "Hanoi Hilton". This man broke both arms and a leg, was tortured and survived. He ejected from his plane back in 1967 and was released in 1974 I do believe. Quite a feat in my book. He might be labeled a bad political choice, but he deserves respect.

Mod parent ad hominem.

This is the danger of judging candidates not by their policy positions, but by their carefully constructed media hype. Remember that with McCain, one could just as easily assert (as some of his opponents will suggest) -- "After finishing fifth from the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy, McCain was a bad enough pilot (probably flying drunk, given his history) that he couldn't keep his plane airborne and out of enemy hands. While in Vietnamese custody, unlike the many prisoners who resisted torture, McCain willingly signed documents 'confessing' to war crimes, and gave the Vietnamese classified information in order to receive more favorable treatment while in prison. Upon returning to the USA, McCain dumped his loyal and long-suffering first wife who had developed back problems, in order to marry a drug-addicted bimbo who had been his physical therapist. He showed poor enough judgment as to take money from Charlie Keating during the S&L scandals of the 1980s, that whether or not he was a crook for taking the money, he was certainly an idiot whose judgment shouldn't be trusted in more important matters."

Why not just judge the man on his policy positions? Oh, they've flip-flopped enough in the last decade that we can't be sure what his positions are, and all we really have to judge by is his history and his character. Oops!

By the way, many assume the bulge on McCain's cheek had something to do with his war injuries. In fact, it's the after-effect of skin cancer surgery.

Re:Never... er... always check your references

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a war hero - ok, fine. What difference does that make to my point? I don't care if he was Roger Ramjet or Captain America himself, having some campaign flunky set up a myspace account to get in touch with youth is just dumb.

Captain America is DEAD, you insensitive clod!

*runs off crying*

Re:Never... er... always check your references

[grif_mcrenolds]

I wonder how many kids he killed over there. Since when did being in Vietnam make you presidential material? There were guys there who made necklaces out of human ears, so the bar must be set pretty damn low.

Re:Never... er... always check your references

[salzbrot]

There were guys there who made necklaces out of human ears, so the bar must be set pretty damn low.

Yeah, I saw this documentary, too. But the thing that really disturbed me is, that later, our government turned some of those guys into cyborgs to fight terrorists in a secret program called UniSol. Thank god it was all brought to light.

Re:Never... er... always check your references

[bkr1_2k]

Which is why polls are open early and late. It's still a cop-out. Saying you can't leave work to vote because you won't get paid is as bogus as saying "it's because of my kids and my long work day". It's a non-starter because polls are specifically set up to accomodate that.

People don't vote because they don't care enough to make the effort. In the past, I would agree, there were plenty of systemic barriers for people of minorities and of lower social standing. In some cases they can still be seen, primarily for people of lower incomes who have to use public transportation to get to polling locations and work etc.

The majority of people however don't vote because they couldn't be bothered to get off their asses.

Just wandering...

[Smerity]

Just wandering, couldn't this be construed as fraud? Taken as an attempt to intentionally deceive people?

Obviously I hope and doubt that anything like that would happen, but I'm just curious if John McCain tries to make an example of this - as so many politicians try to do.

Re:Just wandering...

[ebcdic]

Intentionally deceiving people isn't fraud, and isn't illegal. Deceiving someone to gain something from them would be fraud.

Re:Just wandering...

[Carewolf]

In fact making intentionally deceiving people illegal could have catastrophic consequences on Christmas and Easter as we know it.

Re:Just wandering...

[soft_guy]

Deceiving someone to gain something from them would be fraud. Sounds like pretty much every church and/or politician.

Could have been worse...

[L4m3rthanyou]

If McCain's people know anything, they'll play it off quietly or joke about it, knowing it could have been a lot worse. A less civil person probably would have goatse'd McCain's myspace instead.

...which would have been goddamn hilarious, but I digress.

Re:Could have been worse...

[gfreeman]

Having a photo of an unsightly asshole on a politican's webpage?

Who'd have thunk it?

I for one...

[edwardpickman]

approve and support McCain's new and elightened postion on female marriage.

Re:I for one...

[Jedi Alec]

Well, I for one don't. I'd much rather they slept around. Variation keeps things interesting ;-)

A missed opportunity

[mobby_6kl]

Opportunities like this don't arises too often, Mike should have just replaced the image with hello.jpg.

Re:A missed opportunity

[gbobeck]

I think Mike did the right thing by not goatseing. Mike's image was up for roughly 2 hours. If he had goatse'd instead, most likely the image would have been removed much much sooner.

As a side note, I am a webmaster for a few small sites. When I encounter inline image linking, I tend to replace the image with another which says "I am a Grade A Asshat. I steal bandwidth" or other suitable saying. I reserve hello.jpg for exceptional circumstances (read: someone uses my images on ebay, or some other site which really kills my bandwidth).

Re:+1 Funny.

[ArsenneLupin]

If you're going to prank, prank the hard issues :-) I fully agree. He should have said: Today I announce that I have reversed my position and come out in full support of gay marriage... particularly marriage between two hod studs with hard cocks.

Oh, please...

[Moraelin]

Isn't this like getting financial advice from someone with a hotmail address?

Oh please... Here's an idea for you: how about you turn on the brain and judge the man (or woman), not his email address or MySpace page?

Financial advice: either you trust that guy to be a competent economist, or you don't. That's it. If someone has a Ph.D. from Harvard, who gives a rat's arse about whether he has also a Hotmail address or not.

President: either you trust the guy enough to basically give him a hell of a lot of power, or you don't. The fact that he also has some stupid MySpace page should be the least of your worries.

Note that in both cases we're not talking about some Anonymous Coward with a Hotmail address or MySpace page, but about someone who's known and easy to check. We're not talking "Moraelin for president" or "NightElf12345@hotmail.com offers you free financial advice", but someone who's well known, and whose credentials and opinions are known, public and damn easy to check. So how about doing just that?

So you propose... what? That instead of actually checking and judging the person, you'd rather make some superficial meaningless criterion like their email address the top and only criterion? Would you rather take advice from the janitor because he has a more fashionable email address? Geesh...

Re:+1 Funny.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to prank, prank the hard issues

"Today I announce that I have reversed my position, (placing my ass in front of me) and come out in full support of abortions... particularly abortions resulting from the union of Marines & Iraqi comfort women"

Actually..

[yamamushi]

Thats the whole reason I would have voted for him, hot one on one chick action legalization... :)

New twist on old stupidity

[gbobeck]

This story is very similar to a much older /. story from Sept. 3, 2005: Fuddruckers Called Out on Hotlinking.

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 .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.

Re:heh? And he wants to be president?

[Corporate Troll]

Isn't this like getting financial advice from someone with a hotmail address?

Yes, it is... but that is only because you're (probably) employed in IT. I had a real hard time explaining my father in law that he shouldn't be using the equivalent of aol.com (not actually, that, but from a national provider) for his business. The worst part is: he's got his own domain.

No, he keeps using the old address. Normal people don't see the harm in such adresses.

So, for the masses, I expect that a myspace page would be welcomed.

How many friends?

[pev]

Well he's currently got 2813 friends on myspace - If I'm not mistaken, with Diebolds help that should be just enough to take the next presidency!

~Pev

ABC News, Typical Mainstream Media Sensationalism

[bdub1982]

ABC News has an "interesting" http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/03/mc cains_myspace.htmlarticle about this that shows mainstream media's typical sensationalist hype of things and also shows most people's lack of knowledge and general disregard of technology.

I especially love how the opening line refers to this prank as "a new weapon in campaign digital media warfare", then the article goes on to use phrases such as "McCain didn't give him credit and Davidson sought retribution" and buzzwords like "The Internet battlefield".

I find Mr. Rasiej's comment that "This just goes to show that the Internet is an entirely new battlefield for many of these candidates and they are going to have to develop sophisticated new responses to deal with them" very interesting, since the "sophisticated new response" to this would have been to show some creativity, design your own image, and not leach someone else's bandwidth with an image that has nothing to do with your message. McCain's incompetent Web designer couldn't even be bothered to notice that the image in question said "No requests for design help please". I don't think I'll be asking McCain or any of his peoplefor design help, especially now!

The article also goes on to compare this incident with such things as a genuinely serious security flaw discovered in Rudy Giuliani's website and to Phil de Velis's Clinton/Obama mock political ad. And just to stir in a little more controversy, they had to add that de Velis "formerly lived with a current Obama staffer". Big deal!

Typical mainstream media sensationalistic BS hype! Hopefully nothing bad comes of this.

Step 2

[Registered Coward v2]

Now, when the candidate appears at froums, people should ask if he still supports his earlier announced position in favor of hot women marrying.

That would be funny...

A common issue with MySpace - and you have to act

[Random BedHead Ed]

When others leech your bandwidth you have to do this sort of thing, unfortunately. Whether you choose a joke like this, or Goatse, or a simple warning is really up to you. It's your image, after all.

I have a lot of reasonably large JPEG images on my site (800x600), and a number of MySpace users started to incorporate them directly into their own sites without having the decency to host them themselves. This is funny, because my CC license would have allowed most of them to use the images without even asking me, and the only real problem was that these JPEGs used a lot of bandwidth because visitors to countless MySpace pages were downloading them constantly. I didn't realize any of this until my site went down due to a bandwidth quota, after which I set up a rule to hand out an alternative image. A dose of Goatse would have been completely justified (and some of my friends were pushing for it), but I decided to make a small, low-quality JPEG containing information about what bandwidth leeching is and why it's rude. (Some people haven't noticed it yet, four months later.)

Re:is Orson Welles's "deceipt "

[soft_guy]

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.

The myspace page on google cache

[soilheart]

Google Cache have the version with the hotlinked picture if anyone want to see how it looked
http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:http://www.my space.com/johnmccain

Re:+1 Funny.

[danamania]

No nonononono! If you're going to prank, prank the hard issues :-)

Since most people either don't respond, respond with abuse, or tell me I can't dictate to them what to do with their web page, I gave up emailing them to ask nicely if they could host a pic of mine somewhere else if they wanted to use it. Now I just replace it like Mike did with something embarrassing to the particular site owner who's hotlinking to my images, or for myspace - more often than not I replace the image with http://www.danamania.com/temp/dontloadthis.jpg - I don't know the source of the image, but it's a 964 byte .jpg header of a 10,000 by 10,000 pixel image. It tends to completely ruin formatting on the page it's embedded into so the whole page is unusable, and it's tiny enough not to impact on my bandwidth.

It used to crash X11, make IE perform illegal instructions or freeze, and make OS X browsers beachball - but alas, in the years since I came across that file software has become more capable in handling extreme sized images :)

OH GREAT! THANKS ALOT!

[notnAP]

I still believed, you insensitive clod.

Passionate about image leachers

[BillGatesLoveChild]

> Here is Davidson's account of the "immaculate hack".

That is an immaculate hack. However an even more immaculate hack is the fact we've just Slashdotted him! :-)

Video link looks like a pacifier...

[mikael]

Has anyone noticed that the play button on the video link looks either like he's got a large pacifier in his mouth?

If he's a good politician..

[Anonymous Coward]

..he'll actually change his position for real and support equality for gays instead of joke callously about it while continuing to support blatant discrimination.

Re:If he's a good politician..

[MindStalker]

But he has supported gay rights for a long time. Yes he has stated he thinks its immoral but I think drink is immoral but I don't support taking away your rights to do so. Look at his voting record he has voted against the marriage amendment and other anti gay stuff. Yea sure he isn't out campaigning for them that doesn't mean he hates them either.

Re:If he's a good politician..

[Das Modell]

If I get drunk a lot, I'm only harming myself, not other people.

That's assuming that you don't go for a drive, beat someone up or vomit on the sidewalk.

Re:If he's a good politician..

[trentblase]

I was questioning his definition too, but your island hypothetical strengthens his position in my mind.

Re:If he's a good politician..

[Dun Malg]

So you can eat sand then? Snakes and scorpions are harmless now? Cold and exposure have no power over you any longer, since morality has been demoted to the social realm? You're such an idiot. None of those are issues of morality. It's not ethics that keep us from eating sand, it's basic biology. Animals avoid eating sand, and they have no sense of morality.

Re:If he's a good politician..

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh really? He openly campaigned for banning gay marriage in his state of Arizona.

http://www.azcentral.com/blogs/index.php?blog=85&t itle=mccain_is_star_of_proposition_107_tv_com&more =1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1&blogtype=Pluggedin

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.

Re:If he's a good politician..

[russotto]

And that you aren't married (ok, this is /.). That no one is dependent on you. That you don't need to work the next day. That you pay for your own medical care (and no, employer provided insurance does not count--your coworkers end up paying for you) and always will (no Medicare later and no switch to employer provided insurance). So basically if you are independently wealthy to the point of being unemployed and have no dependents, then drinking is only harmful in the actions that you might take when drunk. Otherwise, drinking beyond moderation (one or two drinks a day; averaging towards one) does harm others.

The underlying premise here has nothing to do with drinking. You are asserting a moral imperative to not harm yourself, to keep yourself healthy, and furthermore to take as little risk as possible.

It's the same reasoning which leads to cries to ban fast food and potato chips. It's a suffocating view of morality which leaves nothing in the personal sphere. And the only proper thing to do with it is to reject it utterly.

Re:A common issue with MySpace - and you have to a

[ThosLives]

I've got to believe there's a better way to serve pictures so that they are only viewable from the appropriate website than a straight http request for the image file. That is how to prevent people from hotlinking, not changing a file so they get something unwanted from their link (because that doesn't prevent them from hotlinking, does it? What if they just hotlink on purpose to the image but set it off-screen or something so it doesn't display but is still fetched just to use your bandwidth out of spite?).

How about trying to solve the actual problem rather than addressing the symptoms?

Re:A common issue with MySpace - and you have to a

[kirun]

Well, I have one myspace user that hasn't yet noticed how much I improved(flashing image warning) their background - any image leeched from that folder also doubles as a page widener for the benefit of forum readers. Elsewhere, I had one image hotlinked from so many forums, I changed the filenames, and added a note to the page specifically asking people to host elsewhere. That didn't work, so I made a custom job which nicely fits with the style of most forums. Next, it seems game screenshots were being borrowed, so another switch (scroll down to EMMA-LATION) was required. Finally, a picture of Maggie Thatcher was hotlinked, so it was swapped(flashing image again) a bit as well.

Re:In my day...

[19thNervousBreakdown]

What do you call someone who still uses leetspeak after 2000?

Re:In my day...

[stonecypher]

Yeah, as opposed to something new and inventive like an XML tagline.

Re:+1 Funny.

[ChairmanMeow]

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.

Re:+1 Funny.

[Fred_A]

It killed Firefox 2.0.0.2 (Ubuntu Edgy version) which has admittedly been oddly brittle so far.

Should be part of the standard display testing suite IMO :)

How's that bandwidth looking NOW, Mike?

[elrous0]

Am I the only one who finds it amusing that he was complaining about bandwidth usage, and now his prank just got him /.ed?

Not that it wasn't a great prank.

Of course, I don't think it fooled anyone. No one would believe that McCain would take such a brave and principled stand anymore. Everyone knows that McCain left behind every shred of integrity after 2000. Now, if you had put up a picture of George Bush's dick in his mouth, now THAT would have been believable.

Re:+1 Funny.

[Anonymous Coward]

You just made my day. Fools and their computers.

I think you learned a good lesson today grasshoppa.

Re:In my day...

[xdroop]

What do you call someone who still uses leetspeak after 2000?

Older than you.

Hey -- measured in Internet Time, we're Senior Citizens now! When do we get our pensions?

Re:+1 Funny.

[CthulhuDreamer]

NASA has an 18.4MB 18000 x 18000 jpeg of the Orion nebula. We use it to stress-test our CAD systems at work.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Orion_Nebu la_-_Hubble_2006_mosaic_18000.jpg

Re:In my day...

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to check the parent of the comment in question. He wasn't responding to the "LoL" comment.
Apologies are due.

C.

Re:+1 Funny.

[profplump]

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.

Re:In my day...

[SatanicPuppy]

Illegal? Oh come on! There isn't even a good analog for this in the world...What they should have done, if they were half intelligent, is made a copy of the image and kept it on THEIR site. What they did was just put a link on the site to a picture that someone else was hosting.

This is a terrible design practice...Not only can your content change in unexpected ways (this was intentional, but I've seen a lot of humorous unintentional stuff happen with this sort of nonsense) but you're also ripping off the guy who's actually paying for the bandwidth to host the content, because whenever someone goes to your page, he's the one uploading the picture. Total rip off!

In short, this is completely legitimate...The person who created, maintained, and hosted the image, changed his personal property, and you think that should be illegal?? If the author of the original stuff hadn't put his content out there to be used by other people, McCain's people could have been up for a breach of copyright.

Hey Everyone, Pitch In!

[carrier lost]

my bandwidth is being used to deliver part of the page! Bad McCain!

Well, how about a few thousand slashdot visitors? Will that help?

MjM

Your analogy is wrong.

[BobBoring]

It's like someone driving through your property every day -- that still doesn't give you the right to paint slogans and ridicule on the trespassing cars as they pass.

No, they were not 'driving through' they were stealing. Every time someone hit McCaine's site the images were pulled from Davidson's site's server. It was just as if they had Mr. Davison's phone card numbers and were making long distance calls on his phone bill. IF you only understand cars then, "It was just as if they were jumping in Mr. Davidson's car and driving it around Mr. Davision's property every day". Does not Mr. Davidson have the right to paint "slogans and ridicule" on his very own privately held vehicle?

Davidson has the right to change the content on his server any time he chooses. He could have just renamed or deleted the image files and left McCaine with a bunch of red X's on the McCaine site. As other contributors have suggested Mr. Davidson could have chosen other even less friendly images to host on Mr. Davidson's very own privately held server using services for which Mr. Davidson is paying.

Re:Your analogy is wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what, it's not like a car. It's not like a boat. It's not like a sock. It's not like a mountain dew bottle.

You know what it is like? Someone had image image tags, which were references to a remote server, instead of a local server.

It is what it is.

ac

Re:Your analogy is wrong.

[neurojab]

Davidson has the right to change the content on his server any time he chooses. He could have just renamed or deleted the image files and left McCaine with a bunch of red X's on the McCaine site. As other contributors have suggested Mr. Davidson could have chosen other even less friendly images to host on Mr. Davidson's very own privately held server using services for which Mr. Davidson is paying.

While there is a certain amount of vigilante justice to that (and I'd be sorely tempted to do the same thing in his shoes) Davidson is probably going to be in legal trouble for this. You see, tort law is all about intent. It will be difficult to prove malicious intent on McCaine's part in this (his web guy was probably too dumb to realize that wasn't hosting the image himself). On the other hand, it would be easy to prove malicious intent on Davidson's part. The intent is what would probably skew the case in McCaine's favor. If I were the judge, Davidson would win, but there's a reason they don't put me on the bench :)

Re:Your analogy is wrong.

[pluther]

Hm. Since the image was on his own server, he can't be charged with any kind of computer hacking crimes. Though I suppose it is possible for McCaine to sue for defamation or some such. Davidson *did* change the image with the intent of making it seem like McCaine was endorsing a position he does not endorse. Malicious intent may not be that easy to prove, though. It's obviously a joke, not a serious attempt to fool anyone. Any lawsuit would hinge on the plaintiff trying to prove that McCaine's followers really are stupid enough to believe that it was legitimate. Fox news failed at this strategy when they sued Al Franken for his "Lies and the Lying Liars..." book, and they had a much better case.

However, Davidson also has a good basis for a counter-suit. McCaine's site did steal his bandwidth and use his templates without giving credit, both of which are clearly spelled out as against the terms of service for using the template.

Re:+1 Funny.

[Hal_Porter]

Yeah, but that's no good. The idea is to replace a file that is being leeched with one which causes all manner of ruckus but is relatively compact. If the replacement file is 18MB, you wouldn't be able to afford the bandwidth costs. Most ISPs either disable the site or move it to a low power web server if it uses too much bandwidth too.

Re:+1 Funny.

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't work in Lynx.

Re:+1 Funny.

[springbox]

Firefox 2.0.0.3 on Windows says there's an error with the image and won't display it

Re:In my day...

[PalmKiller]

So sorry, the government drew too much social security money out to fund the war on terror. You will have to wait until you are 107 years of age to benefit from your contributions.

Re:+1 Funny.

[krakass]

I really, really want to click that link. But something is telling me not to.

Missing Option on Ballot

[onkelonkel]

Having seen the candidates last time around (They say, in America anyone can become president. - Well, that's certainly true), I suspect a lot of folks don't vote because of the missing option on the ballot - "NONE OF THE ABOVE"

Re:+1 Funny.

[Wingnut64]

After using Mozillia and Firefox for many a year, the habit of opening links in new tabs as I'm still reading the article is quite ingrained into me. It was with much dismay that I read your last paragraph, noticed that my mouse stopped working and my harddrive activity light was solid. Firefox died a horrible death, and did so again 3 minutes later as I reflected upon the foolishness of choosing 'Restore last session'. 5 minutes later, I was berating myself for saving the file into a directory that nautalis had open on my desktop, forgetting that it creates thumbnails based on file type, not extension.

I'm now posting this from another computer.

# chmod 000 pandora.jpg

Re:ABC News, Typical Mainstream Media Sensationali

[Jonathan_S]

McCain's incompetent Web designer couldn't even be bothered to notice that the image in question said "No requests for design help please".

If you'd RTFA (yes, yeas, I know this is /.) you'd have seen that the only person who would see "No requests for design help please" was Mike Davidson because it was in his web cache. Everyone else saw the 'normal' link picture.

Ignoring web caches, only Davidson's myspace page would display the version w/ "No requests for design help please" and anyone who leached from his server would get the version w/o it.

This has already inspired similar pranks on McCain

[Phil Urich]

see here for a pretty good one, referencing the new NIN album in the process.