This afternoon I was happily geeking away when I heard a knock at the door. I went to answer and was presented with a local sheriff and two FBI agents holding a lovely search warrant (scans coming when I can get down to Kinko's in the morning).

The original prank was covered earlier.

It appears neither McCain's people nor the FBI have a grasp on what has happened here. In short, it was McCain's web staff that screwed up. The only crime committed here was civil in nature, and was on the part of McCain's web staff. They included images in their MySpace profile that were not hosted on MySpace or McCain's servers, and did not follow the license associated with those images. They did not attribute them, so the owner changed them.

If this escalates, it will be an interesting court case. McCain and the FBI will lose.

For some background reading that relates to this, I strongly suggest reading the account of how Jason Scott did something similar, only much more offensive. I suggest reading the entire account, as it is both extremely humorous and insightful.

Update: The original prank was featured on the Daily Show.

Update^2: It was an April Fools day joke. A pretty believable one too. Heh. I expect this kinda thing to happen these days.

Senator McCain web staff and FBI both lacking clue