-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 22 Aug 1997 23:48:57 +0200, in list.cypherpunks you wrote: [...]
Here in Santa Cruz, graffiti spray-painted on the walls of businesses is a big, and growing, problem. And laws require the businesses to paint over the grafitti, or otherwise render it invisible, in a quick and timely manner. (The idea is that the grafitti is offensive to the sensibilities of others, or somesuch, and that it encourages rival gangs to counter with their own grafitti.)
And yet can J. Random Businessman defend his property against this defacing? Nope. The cops say "Let us handle crimes." But they don't.
There's a solution for taggers: snipers. [...]
Grafitti is criminal (although many of us probably do things that are 'criminal' under some silly law or other), it is definately very annoying and I wouldn't like someone spraying it on my front door, but shooting people for it is a bit over the top I think. Grafitti (as in writing your name on or in something that you don't own) has existed for ages. Only since the invention of spraypaint has it become a big problem. Technology can also provide a solution. Surfaces can be treated so that grafitti can easily be removed. All this of course costs money, but that is, imho, the price of being part of a pile of millions of people, ie. a city. Another solution, which works very well for shopfronts over here, is to actually contract and pay a grafitti gang to spray the shops logo or whatever on the front (or steel blinds). Shooting people for this will probably only make them shoot back, which will ony result in overworked morgue employees and/or high hospital bills. Alex -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.0 Charset: noconv iQA/AwUBNABxOtuYAh4dUSo/EQJk2ACbBvQib5rPa4x2wykBPZbzS/8D2ZUAoMHX CBChEIemL4afO5M4hL7B8oJX =8989 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----