Whoever put together McCain's Myspace page also grabbed the images from Mike Davidson's server, so every time someone visited John McCain's Myspace page, it cost Mike bandwith, which isn't free.

Mike's a good-natured guy and is fairly apolitical - this was just his way of making his point... he could have done much worse but that's not his style.

(And just for the record, this isn't a hack in the sense that most people think of the word)

But McCain has said that he supports at least once in the past.

Calling this "hacking" strikes me as slanderous. All Davidson did was replace his own images, which McCain's people had no business hotlinking to.

Of course, journalists don't understand any more about how the web works than politicians do, so no doubt "McCain's page hacked" will continue to be the standard way to refer to this incident.

This wasn't a hack in ANY sense of the word, and for ABC News to characterize it as such is irresponsible journalism. Jennifer Parker ought to be ashamed of herself. Davidson simply changed an image file on his own server that was being stolen by the McCain campaign. Jennifer Parker and ABC News owe Mr. Davidson an apology and retraction.

The title of this is completely misleading. It seems like the McCain campaign was doing something more along the lines of 'hacking'. Another example of flimsy news hype.

I am actually ok with the characterization of this as a "hack" because a "hack", in the general sense of the word means "to change something so that it achieves a purpose it wasn't previously achieving". Only modern parlance tends to equate "hacking" with actually committing an illegal act.

If I modify the exhaust pipe of my car so that it makes a loud noise when I drive by, that's a "car hack" (albeit a totally annoying one).

"webblog?"

I declare irony.

I think it's hilarius that this bobble head politician actually made a myspace page! Guess he'll be competing with my teenage daughter for coolness points.:rolleyes:

It definitely isn't a hack, it's much, much cooler. McCain's web guys (who I'd imagine dress in all black judging by their gloomy campaign site) have egg on their faces now -- for using the design without attribution, and for compounding that by stealing the designer's bandwidth. Gotcha.

It's not a hack. Why don't you investigate before you report.

MD should send JM a bill for his bandwidth abuse.

I've played the same trick on hotlinkers before.

The only "hack"s in this story are John McCain, Matt Drudge, and any news agency that labels this a "hack".

Just shows how little grasp so many have of teh internets, also to what lengths people like Drudge go to, to smear.

first i've heard of this mike character... i admire his style. its a harmless way to prove his point. i know nothing about computers, but i agree with who-ever said that it isn't TECHNICALLY a hack.

Typical leftist media laziness. Those left-wing media outlets, such as ABC News, are stuffed to the gills with tech-ignorant fools who wouldn't know a hack from a hardware website.

At least, that's the charitable thing to assume. It is in their nature to attack what they do not understand, as they do to the Three C's:

Christians, Conservatives, and Common Sense,

every single day.

Leftist lunacy must stop!!!

This is not a hack, this is abuse on behalf of the John McCain campaign for "image leeching" from Mr. Davidson's web server. This the equivalent of buying a drink for every single person at a bar and putting it on someone else's tab.

Effectively, Mr. Davidson was forced into monetary contribution to the McCain campaign in the form of bandwidth costs.

HACK: Intransitive verb. ] use a computer to gain unauthorized access to data in a system : they hacked into a bank's computer. HACK: [ transitive verb. ] gain unauthorized access to (data in a computer) : hacking private information from computers.

This report is just another poor attempt at what some call journalism.
Didn't even get the real facts. Just like watching ABC news or any prime time news for that matter.

Mike Davidson actually called it the "immaculate hack," so I suppose it is a "hack" of sorts. However, the article implies Mike did something wrong, and completely leaves out the bandwidth issue, which is McCain's real sin here.

Totally within the rights of the image host being charged for traffic to McCain's site to alter the image in any manner he sees fit.

Journalists (and Drudge) like flashy headlines, but this is plain misleading.

To repeat what others have said, this is NOT hacking. Correct your article, ABC.