I sincerely doubt the charges that end up sticking on these guys will be all that strong, but the truth of the matter is that they did disrupt the public, and disrupting the public is a crime. Yes, the authorities probably overreacted, but planting strange devices in public places, some of them depicting what is, by American standards, an obscene gesture, for the sake of advertising a corporate television show...yeah, that's a crime. There's a reason that the public has a process of filing permits for use of public space, and it's to keep nonsense like this from happening in the first place.
I mean, if I have to file a permit so that I can use a public beach for my wedding ceremony...or if I have to file a permit so I can shoot a short on public land, then it stands to reason that I can't go throwing Lite Brites around to advertise a product, either. So, red alert...not necessary...but this was BAD "guerilla marketing", and it was a public nuisance. -- Rhett. http://www.weatherlight.com/freetime > yes, but it's also the story of a major world city being put on red > alert (which could have been avoided), and also the story of some > people who - however stupid - may go to jail for a long time > unnecessarily for a guerilla marketing & video stunt, which is how > all this got started. Despite all my good words in the last email, > the reason people in Europe might roll their eyes is that it seems > like a uniquely American response. So really it's the story of a > political/societal response to the threat of terrorism, which is for > another group and which I keep on prolonging here. sorry. goodnight. > > > On 1 Feb 2007, at 21:38, J. Rhett Aultman wrote: > > This is just a basic story of some dumbasses putting things where they > don't belong and the cops having to diffuse/detonate them. Nothing more. > > -- > Rhett. > http://www.weatherlight.com/freetime > > > > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] > > > > > Yahoo! Groups Links > > > >