Comment by _yosefk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _yosefk | Hacker News Reader

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"Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours."

That's an interesting conception of one's natural rights in a public space, given that basically nothing in a public space "gives you choice whether you see it or not" by the definition of "public space." The following does not sound different in principle from the quote:

"Any member of the opposite sex (who with their looks implies you're not sexy enough and all the fun is elsewhere blah blah BLAH) who gives you no choice whether you see them or not is yours. They're yours to take, 're-arrange and re-use'."

I honestly don't see a difference except in degree (and hence in jail time I'd prefer to see resulting from actions based on each of the attitudes, roughly 15 days and 15 years, respectively.)

There's a big difference between blocking ads on my machine and spraying ads in a public space. The latter is a small-time prank of course and nothing close to a serious crime, but the philosophical basis for it cited above couldn't be more off IMO.

> I honestly don't see a difference except in degree (and hence in jail time I'd prefer to see resulting from actions based on each of the attitudes, roughly 15 days and 15 years, respectively.)

Except for that thing about human rights and dignity, the violation of which is fundamental to the reason why there's jail time for transgressing upon it.

Whereas ads are... really just ads, as long as we don't have anything equivalent for them.

What if I wear something terribly ugly according to a street artist and he throws a pie at me?

What if I paint the walls of my house and a street artist decides my taste is intolerably poor and sprays the walls?

What if I own a shop and advertise something in that painting and it gets sprayed?

What if it's a corporation who puts up the ad?

What if a guy (say Bill G) runs a corporation that someone dislikes and throws a pie at them (as someone in fact did?)

What if someone doesn't like seeing women or people of color on ads and sprays them? (a real-life situation)

Where's the line - when are you free to act in public disregarding others? I for one would imaginably prefer a pie thrown into my face to having something I painted on a wall sprayed over. Why is the former a question of "dignity" while the latter isn't? Is it because corporations have no dignity? What about a model whose image is altered by misogynists - is she entitled to "dignity"?

I think that being too particular about rights ("ads are just ads" hence not covered by rights etc.) is the way to lose all the rights.

(By the same token - not being too particular - all the cases above should cost the perpetrator the same IMO, 15 days of detention, tops I'd guess, although the guy throwing the pie at Bill Gates is much less scary to me than the ad-spraying misogynists; unless you manage to prove the latter constitutes hate speech or such.)

I see the difference between the set of human rights assigned to "publicly distributed information" and "human beings" very much a question of principle and not just a question of degree.

How about:

* "publicly distributed information" is a shop's name and a perpetrator adds racist slurs to that name (the shop is operated by a member of a race disliked by the racist in question.)

* the act of "rearrangement" performed by a "street artist" to a human being is having a pie thrown at them. the human being in question ran a Ponzi scheme and just got out of the courtroom, having proven plausible deniability.

Which one feels subjectively worse? Is this example consistent with "rights assigned to information" and "rights assigned to human beings" residing on entirely different planes?

>I honestly don't see a difference except in degree

Well, that's pretty concerning.

Are you really comparing blocking ads and remix culture to rape?

OK, that's it. You're done. You've passed the point of no return in this discussion, and are no longer participating honestly. You're just going for shock value.

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