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Comment by blackhaz | Hacker News Reader

Fuck that indeed. Very strong message here, and I love it. I wish I could take all those ads and shove them into their asses. But what is being suggested here? What's mine to take? If I see an ad, can I reuse the artwork? No. If I see a car, I can't just copy it's design. Can I just paint over it, or rip it apart? No, that would be vandalism. As much as I hate ads, THEY have re-arranged the world by paying for it in a free market, and we must respect that. Soviet Union had very little ads. So, yes, we must ask permission until we figure out a better way.

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You shouldn't do it publicly and with your name and face with it. You aren't legally allowed to.

But that is far away from "can't". Hardly anyone is going to stop you from drawing a moustache on a poster or from stickering a snarky remark over an ad or from spray painting your opinion about some advertised product on said ad.

> Can I just paint over it, or rip it apart?

That's what Banksy does and says "yes" to.

> No, that would be vandalism.

So what? That's just a word.

> As much as I hate ads, THEY have re-arranged the world by paying for it in a free market, and we must respect that.

LOL, but why "must we"? You have no reasoning, no justification.

It's not just a word, it's a law, from UK's Criminal Damage Act 1971: "A person who without lawful excuse destroys or damages any property belonging to another intending to destroy or damage any such property or being reckless as to whether any such property would be destroyed or damaged shall be guilty of an offence."

But whether we should change that law is probably an off-topic here. All I am saying is that we must respect the law. If we don't agree with the law, we must try to change it, and not just go about destroying each other's property.

What does it mean to say "we must respect the law"? Banksy demonstrates that this is not true. You only need to avoid law enforcement.

It seems to me, of course I have no way of knowing, but it SEEMS to me that you are NOT EVEN AWARE that you're not making arguments.

Most cities in my country have multiple street cameras on every corner. Good luck "avoiding the law" here.

Which is the next problem. Again, a highly asymmetric relationship between the surveillants and the surveilled people.

How do those camera work at night with a peep wearing a ski mask? Or even an IR hat

They manage just fine. About 8-9 months ago they were used to find a couple of vandals who were destroying bus stops at night. The cops traced them from camera to camera and sent a patrol car as a welcoming party.

There are still ways around that. A small act of sabotage is not worth the enforcement for most police agencies, unless you live in a very fascist country. So a small precaution might be enough to avoid it.

Most cities have mask requirements and many cities like SF won't even followup on these types of crimes. The more cameras exist on street corners the less likely the police will get involved.

We don't have to treat each other as humans, either, by that logic.

There's no "logic" at all here. All I did was point out how the other person didn't even make an argument.

Nor did you. You just appeal to some popular notion that everyone already agrees with ("treat humans like humans"). Then you suggest this is the same as the other thing, again giving no reason.

Maybe you really can give reason to someone, who abuses people, not to do it. To treat humans as humans. But you would have to delude yourself to think you already did it here.

You are making an argument here, that the other person didn't make an argument; that means you were applying logic.

Your logic is that there's nothing stopping you from breaking societal norms and doing whatever you have the physical capability to do. Therefore, you can destroy property you don't like (advertisements). You can extend that logic to say that you "can" abuse humans.

But your logic totally misses societal context. When someone says "can", they aren't talking about pure physical capability. That's why no one in their right mind will say "I can stab you".

Social norms can be accepting of such activities if you surround yourself with a like minded group.

Living within whatever social norms exist is common but progressives and activists try to break the social norm. Taboos are real and get broken everyday.. cousins date, 70 year old women and getting together with 20 year olds, there are mothers who hate their kids.

Each social rule broken can have punishments.. wearing white after labor day can get you not invited to a social event. But that doesn't mean you should imprison yourself trying to live within other people's rules. Drawing a funny face on an ad has a low punishment rate, low chance of being cast out of society vs stabbing someone randomly. You can reject some rules and follow others. It has always been your choice.

Thanks for stating the obvious.

Sorry to say, you have failed to comprehend the thread.

> Your logic is that there's nothing stopping you from breaking societal norms and doing whatever you have the physical capability to do. Therefore, you can destroy property you don't like (advertisements).

Who said anything about "societal norms"?

You are just inventing things. You invent an appeal to social norms, then you invent a reply to it.

In fact, all I did was point out how no justification was even given for a claim.

I didn't make any logical response to the non-argument (which wouldn't make sense to even try), instead I made a meta-response ABOUT the fact of non-argument.

> Who said anything about "societal norms"?

The parent comment, by context, was inferring from societal norms. You yourself now say you pointed out how there is "no justification was even given for a claim." That means you are ignoring the parent comments context, which is societal norms. The justification is implied to be societally defined normal behavior. You can ask anyone why they shouldn't steal - it would be related to societal norms / morals. But then your answer, by analogy, would be to discard those arguments.

> I didn't make any logical response to the non-argument (which wouldn't make sense to even try), instead I made a meta-response ABOUT the fact of non-argument.

The assertion that it was a non-argument is based on the rejection of its context.

You're just inventing all this. A whole back and forth argument in your head where you invented both sides.

Correct. I don't treat people as humans out of logic. I do it out of compassion and empathy.

I do not have compassion or empathy for ads.

That is so true! And just as there are people who dehumanize, there are laws which do the same.

Are you saying that the only reason to treat other humans well is because the law says you must?

I would say that is precisely backwards: one should treat other humans well, for a variety of reasons. We write that down in law as a shared agreement. But the law is not itself the reason -- it springs from the reasons.

Well the OP's post was based on rejecting all those "reasons" you're talking about. Those reasons can also apply to other things like not doing theft, not burning down other people's properties, etc.

Who said you should extend that logic from advertising to personal relationships?

I don't have a personal relationship with you.

People-to-people relationships, sorry for my English, I'm not a native speaker.

I don't understand you. You're saying we can go about, say, murdering people and we are fine with that as long as we don't get caught? Is breaking social agreement acceptable if enforcement fails? If my personal ethics allows me to break the law, but enforcement fails, can I still claim to be a positive element of the society?

What I am saying is that society has agreed not to damage each other's property, has agreed to a certain principle. The society has, basically, agreed that enduring outdoor ads is acceptable, while enduring random property damage is not, as there are no exceptions for ad vandalism -- that's what I call to respect here -- agreed principles. If we don't agree with that, we must change the law. If society we live in is ripe for the change, then it should be possible. If not, we have no moral right to do property damage while leveraging all the benefits of living in that society.

The law doesn't come from "society agreeing" -- it's imposed by the strong on the weak and the young.

Well, if we can't agree with the rule of law then what, we're back to a primitive society? I don't think homo sapiens culture is, at this stage, advanced enough to thrive in a primitive community, how attractive that may sound. In a few hundred or thousand years, perhaps?

You are fundamentally mistaken about what "the rule of law" is. The rule of law is not based on "agreement" but enforcement. Even the veneer of agreement is based on enforcement. Historically, this has taken the form of enforced religion. Today, enforced school attendance serves a similar role.

If you're saying that everyone should/must follow the law in all circumstances, that's an extreme position few people would agree with. This would mean inform on Jews to the Nazis or returning slaves to their owners under the Fugitives Slaves Act, to take an example from a democracy. That's even without considering that many laws are somewhat indeterminate, internally inconsistent or at odds with other laws.

If you're saying that there is an a priori moral presumption that laws should be followed, maybe because they represent (possibly) some sort of societal consensus, than that is a closer question, but it doesn't resolve the question of whether the legal rights of the advertisers ought to, in a moral sense, be respected.

Note though that even the US judiciary doesn't make much of a legal mandate with no penalties attached (see the last Obamacare case to reach SCOTUS).

Interesting examples. I would say that Germany at that point was a rather undemocratic society, with all the terror by the Nazis. Can we consider slave-owning society democratic if it includes slaves? This makes me wondering if the position of respecting the law as a form of social agreement is untenable in an undemocratic society. But then again, democracy is a spectrum...

Coming to your question, I don't know. When do legal rights end and moral rights begin? Something I'd really like to read more about. I remember enjoying Michael Sandel's lectures online and then reading his book. Would really like to find something in his style on this topic.

> If we don't agree with the law, we must try to change it, and not just go about destroying each other's property.

But in the case of vandalizing advertisements, breaking the law is a risk some of us are gleefully willing to take.

Legal laws are also just words. It's not like you can reproduce punishment for vandalism in a laboratory with a bunch of stones.

nobody goes to jail for scribbling over an ad

Or painting flowers, which could indeed be treated as vandalism, but that way would also attract too much public attention to the cause, which is something the higher powers would avoid as much as possible.

Banksy is talking about moral right, not legal right. This is obvious unless you're being intentionally dense. He is saying that you have cosmic permission to perform acts of vandalism to advertisements. As long as you don't get caught, you're alright with your chosen deity or whatever.

It's a pretty strong philosophical argument in that direction, in my opinion.

If you're disagreeing with that point, you should be explicit. You're arguing that these companies are paying for the advertising, but they aren't paying you to throw the rocks at your head, they're paying the building from which they obtain their vantage point. I don't think that actually qualifies as "paying for it", morally.

I am afraid extending personal "moral rights" to the domain of property damage is a risky avenue to pursue. Who defines what's moral? I also don't agree with that the failure of enforcement by the society automatically grants anybody a moral right to break the law. What about all uncaught murderers? Actually, it is interesting we transverse to physical damage here. I wouldn't equate seeing outdoor ads to receiving bodily harm, to a theft of a piece of "consciousness" or attention - eh, maybe...

I don't know much about philosophy, but what if we can assume that legal rights end and moral rights begin only when we deal with someone's natural rights, is this tenable? If we take the Declaration of Independence as a starting point, as long as there is no danger to our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, we should not deem ourselves as being in the power to judge what property we can damage ourselves. Sounds like something I could live with.

You are not arguing the point. Billboard advertisers do not transact with you for your attention. They are trampling all over your property without consent. The argument is that you have a right to prevent that from happening. That doesn't extend to a moral right to burn the building down, I obviously have no moral right to go no further than what is necessary to reverse that.

> moral right, not legal right

Thank you, this pretty neatly covers what I would have liked to add but couldn't find words for.

I find it pleasing to approach his approach as works and displays of art. Are they explicit calls to aggressive, rebellious arms? Maybe. Is he selling out from commercializing on his art? Perhaps. I don't really care to respond directly to either of those questions here.

Mainly want to give a shoutout to his Barcode stencil, which made a really big impression on me so far (I haven't finished the Banksy book that I found it in) and that I think is pretty fitting here. Looking around on the web, it seems there are variants, but the one with the leopard is great.

Breaking laws comes with punishments but we are still free to break laws. In some situations, there may even be an ethical imperative to break the law.

Why, exactly, would anybody "respect that"?

Well maybe don't take legal advice from a graffiti artist? shrug

> As much as I hate ads, THEY have re-arranged the world by paying for it in a free market, and we must respect that.

This is garbage libertarian ideology, and it can and should be questioned and opposed at every opportunity.

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