Yesterday an anti-gay marriage group, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), linked to a Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal cartoon by Zach Weiner – presumably because it was viewed of as pro-traditional sexuality. Zach was alerted to the image being used but was also alerted that the group was pulling the image directly from his server (called hotlinking) and not theirs. This presented an opportunity for Zach to swap out the image for another changing the content on NOMs page completely.
I messaged my brother/webguru Marty Weiner, who sprung into action. He worked on figuring out how to change the image without affecting the SMBC main page while I worked on finding an image. My initial idea was to post some dirty pictures, but I figured I could get more traction if I went the classy route.
I settled on a rainbow flag and a quote. At first, I considered using a Harvey Milk quote, but I decided to go with someone I could only assume NOM favors: Mr. Thomas Jefferson.
Here’s a screenshot of the final work.
The attention NOM received for hotlinking the image sent a large number of Zach’s fans to the site tanking the site for much of the night. It’s back up now – with the image pirated the proper way (at least if you’re going to steal an image, don’t steal their bandwidth too).
Oh, that is beautiful!
That is a good one. 🙂
Awesome!
You showed them Zach 🙂
That is so awesome. I’ve heard of various paybacks for hotlinking, but this is definitely my favorite.
Thanks everyone! It’s been a fun 24 hours 🙂
So Zach,
Anyword from the “hackers”?
HAHA! AWESOME Zach!!
Bravo Zach! Bravo!
It’s too bad the NOM site has the original cartoon back up.
Awesome.
I would’ve loved to have been a fly on the wall when the webmaster of that site saw that front page.
HE SHOOTS!! HE SCORES!!
Bravo…and the crowd goes wild!!! 😉
Bravo, sir. Bravo.
They already took the stolen image back down again. Guess they finally realized THEY were the butt of the joke.
Amazing Zach! As if I didn’t admire you enough already…