Opinion: Teaching McCain a lesson about copyrights

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On his presidential campaign’s official MySpace page, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) came out in favor today of gay marriage, ‘particularly marriage between passionate females.’ No, The Onion didn’t seize control of McCain’s campaign. Instead, according to TechCrunch, McCain’s MySpace page was, umm, retouched by one Mike Davidson, a peeved software developer. Evidently, McCain’s campaign used a MySpace template from Davidson’s company, Newsvine, to construct its page, but failed to give the company credit as it demands. Think of this as the page-design equivalent of borrowing lines from a British politician’s speech without acknowledging the source. The McCain campaign also pulled one of the images used on the page -- a list of links for messages and other community-related functions -- directly from Newsvine’s computers. Davidson said he doctored the image (which was stored on his equipment, after all), turning it into a fake statement by McCain reversing his position on gay marriage. It didn’t take long for McCain’s staff to react; the senator’s MySpace page is back in conformity with his political beliefs.