[11871] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Electronic Grafitti (was Re: Mr. Green Card makes the Times)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bruce Gingery)
Fri Apr 22 13:05:28 1994
Date: Fri, 22 Apr 94 03:59:47 -0600
From: bruce@totsyssoft.com (Bruce Gingery)
To: nelson@crynwr.com (Russell Nelson)
Cc: koreth@hyperion.com, com-priv@psi.com
Reply-To: Bruce Gingery <lcbginge@antelope.wcc.edu>
On Thu, 21 Apr 94 08:30 EDT, Russell Nelson <nelson@crynwr.com>
responded to earlier postings...
>>> What would happen if a bunch of site owners got together and
>>> lbilled that law firm for the disk space and bandwidth/phone
>>> time eaten by the ad?
> ...Some real estate owners allow people to transit their
> land to get to landlocked public property (e.g. to see
> the pretty falls). They do this with the expectation
> that people will respect their privacy and their property.
> When that doesn't happen, they take action, usually to
> post no-trespassing notices.
> Similarly, Usenet site owners make their property
> available to people under certain conditions. And one
> of them is the expectation that people will respect
> certain conventions, e.g. that the topic of a posting
> match the groups it's posted in.
For a VERY brief period, some places decided to look on grafitti
as folk-art, and actually either encouraged the casual wall painters,
or at least looked the other way, as a matter of policy. From what
I've been able to tell most places have pretty well reverted to
allowing the OWNER OF THE WALL to decide what was defacement (abuse
misuse...) and what was not.
Also, most places do not allow you to just run up and glue printed
advertisements to public (or business or home) walls
indescriminantly, but the same business that has two or three free
"window space" advertisements for various groups, charities, missing
children, etc, would sue quickly if someone came along and posted a
sign for their (other) business on the front of the window without
asking.
Posting advertisements to groups not so organized is comparable to
standing outside of one business and interfering with persons
entering that establishment, while loudly advertising another.
Who's the lawyers here? Would that be an actionable activity?
Bruce Gingery
---
lcbginge@antelope.wcc.edu
bruce@TotSysSoft.com
