Jon Holato

The individuals in charge of presidential hopeful John McCain’s e-campaign changed his MySpace layout today, but unfortunately for them, they forgot to read the fine print. They used a template from Newsvine Founder and CEO Mike Davidson, but forgot to a) give him credit for the template, and b) host template images on their own server.

(picture courtesy of TechCrunch)

As you can see, Davidson wasn’t going to stand for not getting recognized for his work AND having to pay bandwidth fees for McCain’s MySpace page, as he changed one of the images to say “Today I announce that I have reversed my position and come out in full support of gay marriage…particularly marriage between two passionate females.” Pretty genius if you ask me.

Was he wrong to pull a fast one on the McCain team like this? Surely he could have easily contacted McCain’s campaign and asked for them to adhere to the guidelines. So I guess it all depends on the intent of those who implemented the layout; if they knowingly took out attribution and used others’ bandwidth then they were in the wrong and deserved it — online resources aren’t free. However, if they didn’t and this was accidental then Davidson is in the wrong and acted a bit harsh without trying something else initially.