John McCain's MySpace Page "Pranked" 503
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".
Let's see how McCain handles it (Score:5, Insightful)
This could majorly backfire (Score:4, Insightful)
Could have been worse... (Score:5, Insightful)
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:This could majorly backfire (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
A missed opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This could majorly backfire (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This could majorly backfire (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This could majorly backfire (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, please... (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Never... er... always check your references (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A missed opportunity (Score:3, Insightful)
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:This could majorly backfire (Score:1, Insightful)
Too bad. That's what you get for linking to material from other sources, and it is why many web sites specifically indicate external links, often with disclaimers.
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".
Of course, the real irony is that by doing such a good prank, he'll have *far* more traffic from a link to his article from
Re:heh? And he wants to be president? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:This could majorly backfire (Score:3, Insightful)
ABC News, Typical Mainstream Media Sensationalism (Score:5, Insightful)
ABC News has an "interesting" http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/03/mc cains_myspace.html [abcnews.com]article 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.
Re:Never... er... always check your references (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Actually.. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:This could majorly backfire (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Just wandering... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This could majorly backfire (Score:2, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
If he's a good politician.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This could majorly backfire (Score:3, Insightful)
The judge would also figure out that he was completely in his rights to do this.
Re:Let's see how McCain handles it (Score:5, Insightful)
If McCain is a good politician and decent human being, he should come out in support of gay marriage.
Re:This could majorly backfire (Score:2, Insightful)
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:If he's a good politician.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This could majorly backfire (Score:2, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:+1 Funny. (Score:2, Insightful)
I think you learned a good lesson today grasshoppa.
Re:This could majorly backfire (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
It's a great hack. It's so simple and elegant that some people don't even realize that it's a hack.
Re:Let's see how McCain handles it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This could majorly backfire (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This could majorly backfire (Score:3, Insightful)
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:In my day... (Score:2, Insightful)
Apologies are due.
C.
Re:This could majorly backfire (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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 [lightlink.com], 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:In my day... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Your analogy is wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
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:If he's a good politician.. (Score:2, Insightful)
That's assuming that you don't go for a drive, beat someone up or vomit on the sidewalk.
Re:This could majorly backfire (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
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:If he's a good politician.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This could majorly backfire (Score:4, Insightful)
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.)
Re:Your analogy is wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Never... er... always check your references (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Missing Option on Ballot (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Your analogy is wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
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:If he's a good politician.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.