Oops, I voted for Rick Astley 961 times

Wasting no time in getting their man elected "Best Act Ever," the large and mostly anonymous under-culture of Rick Astley fans has already deployed a device to defraud the voting on MTV Europe's website. 

The "RickVoter" is a very basic utility that simply navigates to MTV's voting page and votes for Astley...over and over and over. 

MTV most likely didn't bother to build a big security wall to defend against this kind of ballot stuffing, but it seems clear that having left the contest open to being tinkered with, they essentially guaranteed a win for Astley.

Why do I say this? Consider the following anecdote. I loaded the RickVoter to test it out, curious if it actually did what it said it would. But after looking at it for a couple of minutes, I got distracted by a few phone calls and e-mails. By the time I got back to my experiment a half-hour later, I saw that it had been busily voting the entire time, and I had registered my support for Astley 961 votes. Er, my bad?

I would beg for MTV's forgiveness for contributing to the fixing of this election, but there's no real point. If even a few dozen people have left the RickVoter on all night long, then Astley no doubt has hundreds of thousands, or millions, of votes, and 961 is barely a drop in the pond.

The question now is whether MTV will consider the results valid or if they'll throw them out because of the irregularities here. One could easily argue that they invited this kind of mischief by putting Astley on the ballot in the first place and that pleading ignorance to the perils of malwebolence should not be a defense in this case. But I still think that if they're smart they'll just declare Astley the winner, get him on the show, and take a shower in the ratings windfall that would follow. 

ADDED: From Digg commenter Nat3r:  "i had about 100 tabs of bestactever.com open when this first happened, with 5 votes every two second... meaning every two seconds i would vote 500 times...i left it on for 17 hours."  You do the math...

— David Sarno

Related:

Web Scout's March interview with Rick Astley (includes audio)
MTV to fans: Is Rick Astley the 'Best Act Ever'?

Comments

[Anon]

lolwut

[ODB]

It's not like OMGWTFHAX! These tools are available to Brotnety and Bill fanbois if they cared enough about this super srys contest.

IMO...Best Ever Artist without Will Smith is a big joke. It needs a big punchline: Rick Astley FTW!

[anonymous]

congrats, you've been backdoored by 4chan

please encourage more people to run chan-related executables.

[anon]

If Rick does not win this, I will go an hero. True story.

I will never give you up Rick! or let you down!

[Kip HT]

I think MTV should honor our votes. The website clearly states "VOTE AGAIN TO MAKE SURE YOUR FAVOURITE WINS."

They've left it completely open. We've been voting again and again, like they said.

Even if they don't honor it, they should recognise his huge fanclub of Anon

[Bill Koonlipz]

They're doing it too:

http://www.tokiohotelinternational.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=91230

[Anon]

Well, they did say you could vote as many times as you wanted.

[anonymous]

I voted over 9000 times!

[V4R]

We're doing this all for you Rick Astley!

We're never gonna give you up!
We're never gonna let you down!

[mrgtb]

He was always a nice guy, never did drugs or anything wild. Boring fart!

[James]

This gives all the people that put their religion as "Jedi" on the last census something to do.

[corey]

in 17hours thats like 16.5 million votes

[futaba]

I accidentally 961 times!

[Rick Cain]

I voted a few times in the original way.

As for ballot stuffing, well those fans of Tokio Hotel (who?) and U2 can stuff the box all they want too.

Perhaps their problem is they have no fans. Tokio Hotel is a pathetic gender-bending band that sings...well something, and U2 has become a subsidiary of Apple, Inc., hardly worth best act ever status. Go sell some iPods Bono.

Rick Astley is talented, nobody can deny it and his songs are catchy, thats why he has become a huge symbol of the 80's.

[Wow]

Wow, just wow. First you didn't actually read the poll, because it states vote as many times as you want, thus making this WHOLE article absolutely pointless. Please do your job better.

[Tim]

It's almost sad that, even though I'm mostly a fan of modern music, just turning 18, Rick Astley IS the best choice on the list. I shall proudly autovote him to victory, trumping over modern molded stars like Brittany Spears and U2.

[Dan]

"One could easily argue that they invited this kind of mischief by putting Astley on the ballot in the first place..." Actually Rick Astley wasn't on the original ballot, it was only after he received so many votes that he was later put on.

[Well...]

"they invited this kind of mischief by putting Astley on the ballot in the first place"

Actually, he was put on the ballot through open nominations... And since the legion of over 9000 anonymous fans worked the same way then that they do now... Well, let's just say that a nomination script isn't harder to write than a voting script.

[Ryan]

There are other ways to do it as well.
I voted for Astley close to 20,000 times around the first of October.
I used bestactever.com open in many tabs and an addon for FF3 and other sites.

My dorm floor hated me because of the bandwidth I ate up for that experiment.

Thanks for reminding me that the work is not finished. More votes for Astley than there are Humans on earth. Off to vote.

[AnOn]

I accidentally a whole Rick Astley OVER 9000 times!

4chan = final boss of the internets, I salute you anons.

[Free Xbox 360]

Never gonna give you up...

[Desu]

I Think Rick Astley Is A Cool Guy, eh gets lots of votes and doesn't afraid of anything

[Paco 650]

I agree. Let Astley win. Invite him to sing on the show. Enjoy ratings windfall. Effectively end old and tired meme.

[lulz]

mtv is actually encouraging you to vote more than once.

[desudesudesu]

Anon shoots! RICK SCORES!

[Karl]

I only voted once. Just because some people are abusing the system doesn't mean all of our votes should be disqualified.

For all you know, they are tracking votes by IP address & allowing only on per IP.

[Cmdrfred]

Dont worry about MTV getting cheated with the votes, they got Norton.

[Anonymous]

If Rick Astley does not win this, I swear to my existence I will never turn MTV on again in my life.

[digger]

http://digg.com/celebrity/MTV_never_contacted_Astley_about_EMA_nomination

[Rick Cain]

Rick will never be a tired meme. He will outlast all of us. When I grow old and too frail to use a computer I will feel a certain comfort that my children will continue RickRolling others for years to come.

[Jim Kettler]

OVER 9000 times!!!!!!!!!!!
OVER 9000!!!!!!!!

[Hans Burckhard]

Rick HAS to win

why?

cause I ALONE voted over 1 million times for Rick he must have over 1 billion votes if we consider the huge amount of people who vote for him EVERY DAY

RICK WE LOVE YOU GREETINGS FROM GERMANY