quote:Originally posted by ElJay: If the ads were placed on property that Turner did not own and did not get permission to use, then their actions were illegal regardless of if they notified the city or not. Other companies, including Microsoft and I believe Coke, have gotten fined heavily for littering and/or vandalism for graffiti style advertisments in various cities, including chalked ads on sidewalks. You can't just go throwing advertisments up anywhere you want.
I wish we had consistency for these rules. If corporations can't do it, then people shouldn't be allowed to put up "lost pet" or "garage sale" or "come see our band" fliers without equally large fines.
Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
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Right. You would normally have to get a permit to put up any kind of sign/attention getting device. It would be incredibly difficult/impossible to get said permit if you did not own the property you wanted to display on, or did not have permission from the property owner. That is what they did illegal and that is what they should be charged with.
Forcing them to pay for anything else that happened in the city that day would not be an appropriate reaction (IMO). They should have to pay for what they did, not what the city did.
Posts: 2596 | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:Originally posted by ElJay: If the ads were placed on property that Turner did not own and did not get permission to use, then their actions were illegal regardless of if they notified the city or not. Other companies, including Microsoft and I believe Coke, have gotten fined heavily for littering and/or vandalism for graffiti style advertisments in various cities, including chalked ads on sidewalks. You can't just go throwing advertisments up anywhere you want.
I wish we had consistency for these rules. If corporations can't do it, then people shouldn't be allowed to put up "lost pet" or "garage sale" or "come see our band" fliers without equally large fines.
Fine EROSOMNIAC! I hope you enjoy your big corporate business backed dribble music! Way to crush inspiration and budding artists with your elitist machine!
quote:I wish we had consistency for these rules. If corporations can't do it, then people shouldn't be allowed to put up "lost pet" or "garage sale" or "come see our band" fliers without equally large fines.
They can be, it just usually doesn't happen. Kinda like how it's illegal to get drunk in a bar but it is rare that someone is charged with it. If you put up a sign anywhere public, you have to have a permit.
Edit: also, the fines usually aren't that big.
Posts: 2596 | Registered: Jan 2006
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I dunno, eros, flyers on telephone poles seem different from ads sprayed on sidewalks and sides of buildings, even if they're sprayed with stuff that will wash off eventually.
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
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Also, I only see band flyers on community bulletin boards, usually. And garage sale signs around here have to be taken down again after the sale is over, within a certain amount of time, I think.
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
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quote:I wish we had consistency for these rules. If corporations can't do it, then people shouldn't be allowed to put up "lost pet" or "garage sale" or "come see our band" fliers without equally large fines.
They can be, it just usually doesn't happen. Kinda like how it's illegal to get drunk in a bar but it is rare that someone is charged with it. If you put up a sign anywhere public, you have to have a permit.
Edit: also, the fines usually aren't that big.
I probably should have said: "I wish we had consistency in the enforcement of these rules."
quote:I dunno, eros, flyers on telephone poles seem different from ads sprayed on sidewalks and sides of buildings, even if they're sprayed with stuff that will wash off eventually.
Not seeing how that's different than kids drawing enormous hopscotch grids and hideous pictures on public sidewalks/streets.
quote:Also, I only see band flyers on community bulletin boards, usually. And garage sale signs around here have to be taken down again after the sale is over, within a certain amount of time, I think.
Probably due to the difference in geography: I see them all the time, everywhere. Fliers for bands, lost pet notices, missing person notices, signs and ads asking people to become grassroots workers for Save the Children, WashPIRG, etc.
Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
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Must be geography. Kids around here only draw on the sidewalks in front of their own house, too. Which is still public, but since the homeowner has to pay for the sidewalks, I'm fine with their kids using them. But I'd be pissed if some company sprayed an ad in front of my house.(I just had to pay to replace a chunk of sidewalk in front of my house two summers ago, because the city inspector thought it was heaving up too much from a tree root.)
We get missing pet notices, but the rest of that stuff seems to be confined to appropriate places.
I checked google, btw. Microsoft had to apologize for sticking butterfly decals up in NYC, Verizon was fined for spray chalk on sidewalks in D.C., but I couldn't find how much, and IBM had to pay $120,000 for fines and clean-up costs for spray chalk promoting Linux in Chicago and San Francisco in 2001. Not that much, really.
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
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the problem with all the calls to fine/punish these advertisers above and beyond whatever permit violations they are guilty of is that while the light-bright ads may look like bombs (to some) but so could an almost infinite amount of other things.
If I toss a pringles can on the curb under a bridge should I be fined the $5000 for littering or imprisoned for attempt to incite terror? I mean, I could concievably put a small bomb in a pringles can and leave it anywhere to go off at a later time.
What about when I'm walking around town carrying my brief-case or suit-case? I could have a nuke in one of those and be walking toward some high-population area to set it off...
What about when a box or barrel etc falls off the back of a pickup truck? should there be greater fines because those could concievably house a bomb?
Sure it's quite possible that these things weren't advertising devices and were actually bombs (from the initial observations) but the same could apply to just about anything else around the size of a book or bigger.
Do I think it's most likely illegal and somewhat irresponsible for the company to have done this without permits (thereby notifying the city of where these devices were) it's also fairly rediculous to try pursuing anything other than the normal fines for such a misdemeanor...
Posts: 1038 | Registered: Feb 2006
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My husband told me about the story before I read a paper or saw the news.
I was apalled that the young men were being treated so harshly.
Then I saw pictures of them, and heard their "funny" report.
I did not find them funny. I found them arrogant and disrespectful. Even if it was a total accident, they frightened a lot of people.
This does not change the fact that I believe the whole situation was blown out of proportion. It does change my opinion of these men. Their behavior made me cringe.
Posts: 10890 | Registered: May 2003
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quote:It was a LIGHTBRITE. It was a bunch of LED lights with batteries. That's it. How do you confuse that with a bomb?
Bombs can look like any damn thing their makers want them to, Alt. They don't even have to be all that big. There would be plenty of room to hide a bomb in a litebrite, and still have it function as an actual litebrite as well.
So, a bomb could be in a watermelon, perhaps? But my grocery store maliciously planted a large number of those in a high-traffic area! Arrest whoever is responsible! Throw the book at them!
If a bomb can look like anything, then we should obviously arrest everyone who puts things that look like anything in places where we might be frightened by them!
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Elizabeth: I did not find them funny. I found them arrogant and disrespectful. Even if it was a total accident, they frightened a lot of people.
They likely acted that way because they were pissed that they were being treated like terrorists, so they got their "revenge" by poking fun at the city.
Was it a mature way to act? No, but not all that hard to understand.
Posts: 1901 | Registered: May 2004
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To me it seemed like they felt the whole thing was so entirely silly (that anyone would mistake their litebrite ads for bombs) that they decided to just continue acting silly about the whole thing and maybe it would all go away. When we take people's ridiculous paranoia seriously, we just make more of a mountain out of what is just a small bump, i.e. someone's embarrassing mistake.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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Some facts that seem to be overlooked here:
One: Early in the morning, a bomb threat was called in, and a hoax pipe bomb found.
Two: These devices are not lit up during the day, when they were found.
Three: The first one found was on a support girder under 93 northbound... one of the major arteries in the city.
Four: 5 1/2 hours after the city started responding to the potential threat, an email was apparently sent by the marketing company telling employees not to alert the city of boston that these devices were advertisements.
Five: Three hours after this, the city received the first notification from the marketing agency that the devices were not bombs.
Six: Just because the first one, two, three, or seventeen weird looking objects you find are not bombs, does not mean the eighteenth won't be.
The city responded in a perfectly rational way, given the way the incident developed during the day. The marketing agency utilized the cities response to further market their product, by requiring their employees not to contact the city of boston as to what the devices were.
Given that the marketing agency allowed the emergency response to continue for several hours after they knew that the police were responding to their devices, I don't see how a just settlement ends WITHOUT aqua teen hunger force off the air, and the marketing agency still extent.
Posts: 4112 | Registered: May 2001
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quote:Frankly I hope that the FederalCommunicationsCommission pulls TurnerBroadcasting's license. And that the Boston District Attorney files the harshest criminal charges possible against everybody who approved of or participated in the advertising campaign.
Hopefully you've mellowed this position somewhat!
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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It was their press conference, they can do whatever they want with it. It doesn't make them immature, either. I, for one, was very happy when they told that snooty reporter to stay on topic.
Posts: 1069 | Registered: Feb 2005
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"It was their press conference, they can do whatever they want with it. It doesn't make them immature"
I never said immature. I said arrogant. Arrogance crosses all age lines.
If they go to court for this, they will not have the media to play their scene for, just a judge and jury, and I hope they take the situation more seriously.
Dag, or other lawyers, can they be prosecuted for trespassing, even if they were "ordered" by their employer to do so? Or does the employer have an out, saying, "We told them to put the devices up, we did not tell them where?"
These young men can make their jokes, but it might turn out that the joke is on them, and I doubt their display will help them if it comes to that.
Posts: 10890 | Registered: May 2003
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At first I found these two to be completely irresponsible. Part of that is my already predisposed dislike of Cartoon Network's night programming and Turner Broadcasting. Then, I learned the truth.
They found a lot of Nightbrights with pictures of a cartoon character on them. They were sitting around for two weeks with no one noticing. What that means is two things. First, what they did as a stunt was rather bothersome, but not of the terrorist level. Second, if this was a serious terrorist attempt, Boston at least has proven it can't really protect anyone. The bombs could have gone off (if that is what they were) in two days or less.
I no longer see these two in the same light as I at first did. They are still idiots, but their contempt for the media is a breath of fresh air. Most of the comments I have read on blogs are very supportive of the "hair" news conference. Basically, it comes down to news reporters are arrogant and these two stripped the media's self-proclaimed importance. I also learned something else, if the majority of responses I have seen from "regular" people is correct. The way to make the media look bad and gain sympathy is not to get all defensive or try to play by their rules, but simply make fun of them.
My guess is that they will be much more serious at the trial (if they talk at all instead of just the lawyers). What they did do is basically say "I am not going to be put on trial by the media. That is not their business. If they want to use me, I am going to use them." The lesson? Treat the media with hormorous scorn and they go away.
Posts: 2207 | Registered: Oct 2003
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The joke is already on them, and they know it. They had to get bailed out on jail because we had a spontaneous societal realization that some people are intent at being jumpy in a "post 9/11 world" and will radio in a lite-brite as a bomb threat.
So, they roll with the punches.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Dag, or other lawyers, can they be prosecuted for trespassing, even if they were "ordered" by their employer to do so? Or does the employer have an out, saying, "We told them to put the devices up, we did not tell them where?"
In a general sense, being told to trespass by your employer would not be a defense. However, depending on the mental element (intent/knowledge), a reasonable belief that the employer had permission to do this would be a defense. This is called a mistake of fact defense, and is available for many offenses.
Inducing someone to commit a crime generally results in criminal liability for that crime, although the details vary from state to state. So if I tell an employee to commit a crime, I would likely be guilty of that crime once it's committed. In most states, I think this would be true even if the employee has the mistake of fact defense.
Liken it to a supervisor in a hospital telling a nurse that a hypodermic has medicine that has been prescribed for a patient. If the supervisor instead put cyanide in the hypodermic, then the nurse would be guilty of nothing (assuming it was reasonable for her to believe the supervisor - this would depend on standards of care in the medical field), yet the supervisor would be guilty of murder.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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The only possible defense -- not for the advertisers, but for people consider Lite-Brites dangerous -- is now available.
Posts: 1877 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Which is still public, but since the homeowner has to pay for the sidewalks, I'm fine with their kids using them. But I'd be pissed if some company sprayed an ad in front of my house.(I just had to pay to replace a chunk of sidewalk in front of my house two summers ago, because the city inspector thought it was heaving up too much from a tree root.) 
