Q-Seattle Events: Tacky Tourist Clubs

Seattlest reports that John McCain's official page on MySpace (of all places) briefly offered a surprising message to browsers Tuesday morning: "Today, I announced that I have reversed my position and come out in full support of gay marriage ... particularly marriage between passionate females."

But, no... It wasn't a real change of heart from the straight folk on the "Straight Talk Express."

Seattlest explains:

A McCain staffer swiped a template page from Seattle-based news-sharing site Newsvine and when Newsvine CEO Mike Davidson figured out that the template was directing a lot of traffic to an image hosted by Newsvine he swapped it with his own message of tolerance. Instead of a generic list of links McCain's site began displaying an announcement of his support for gay marriage.

This (borrowed, but not hot-linked from Newsvine) is what the upper left corner offered to visitors until McCain staffers replaced the pilfered code with the current muddled mess:

Newsvine CEO Mike Davidson insisted that the prank wasn't meant to be political.

Before McCain fans comment on this, let me reiterate that this was a prank. I'm not politically inclined, I'm not anti-McCain, and I'd have a beer with the guy anytime. Election season on Newsvine is sure going to be fun though.

It was, instead, intended as a lesson in internet etiquette: Never link to an image on someone else's server without explicit permission. (I.e. use linking prophylactics.)

Since McCain staffers had violated that cardinal rule, changing their message was barely even hacking.

So, the only thing necessary to effectively commandeer McCain's page with my own messaging was to simply replace my own sample image on my server with a newly created sample on my server. No server but my own was touched and no laws were broken. The immaculate hack.

Be careful out there, especially when you're in nasty neighborhoods like MySpace.

Labels: blog-on-blog, link bites, politics