The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), also known as H.R. 3261, is a bill that was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011, by Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors. The bill expands the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. Now before the House Judiciary Committee, it builds on the similar PRO-IP Act of 2008 and the corresponding Senate bill, the Protect IP Act.

As a photographer and as a person who hosts and posts a lot of images, I get people directly linking to my server all the time on Myspace, Friendster, Facebook and so on. There’s my image, plain as day. No credit for my work, no thank you Jay Lee for this awesome picture!, no nuthin! And to make matters worse, they’re pulling it directly from my server.

The John McCain team discovered that this is a huge no-no and they discovered it in a way that we here at Technology Bytes can truly appreciate.

Apparently John McCain has his own Myspace page which utilizes a template created by Mike Davidson over at Newsvine.com.

The McCain team ripped the template without crediting Davidson and, to add insult to injury, hot-linked to one of his images.

Davidson retaliated.

By simply changing the picture on his own server, Davidson was able to give Senator McCain and new political outlook.

You can read Davidson’s own account on his blog, but be warned. As of this morning the story was “slashdotted” so his site is responding a little slowly.

*Screen capture of McCain’s Myspace hack created by Mike Davidson

Some smartass set it to techno music and I found it on a post on Alternet.
It is almost as good as “All Your Base are Belong to Us”.