Hacks attack headless man

YESTERDAY WE reported how Computer geek Ben Vanderford had posted the video of himself being beheaded to show how dumb the media were in reporting such matters.

Based on Vanderford's story, it is fairly clear what happened. The young bloke saw the beheading video of Nick Berg which is widely claimed to be a fake. He decided to see if he could fake a similar one. He puts his name and address on the video just in case anyone is dumb enough to take it seriously and sticks it on Kazaa to show it to his mates.

It sits there for three months until it is downloaded by a terror group who thinks, hey we can use this and we don't even have to kill anyone and so they stick it on their site.

Associated Press pick it up and instead of checking the name and address on the video run it as fact. When the hacks discover it isn't, they decide to change the angle of the yarn to make Vanderford the baddie.

Most of the hacks who followed up the hoax version of the story had not even seen the video. It really is a bit third rate and you have to be pretty dumb to think it real.

The next stage is that the hacks phone up the Feds and ask them if they are investigating. The Feds say that they are now. Next the hacks get a few of their tame contacts to spit some bile at Vanderford.

One particularly nasty jibe came in a Mercury News article where Theodore Glasser, Stanford University professor of communications provided a strange sound byte which said that Vanderford's actions were like "bombing a building to see if security measures are in place. You don't demonstrate something like that at the public's expense".

However, bombing a building is a little different from sticking a video of yourself on Kazaa, so we wonder if Glasser was acting in a rent-a-quote situation without actually knowing much of the facts.

Vanderford is not enjoying his 15 minutes of fame. His ISP has already shut down his account because the file was shared from there.

Marc Perkel of Computer Tyme Hosting has stepped in to give Vanderford a site. He thinks Vanderford is getting a hard time of it by the American press who really hate one being pulled over on them.

Perkel told the INQ: "The FBI is trying hard to find something they can charge these kids with to save the press the embarrassment of having screwed up the original story. You see - if they can persecute them - then that take attention off their own cover-ups, their stupidity".

Vanderford's side of the story is here. µ