Event Cancelled | Hacker News Reader

Event Cancelled

pinchingtheostrich.typepad.com

52 pointsJacobAldridge38 comments

It's kinda funny and clever. It will fall down if they do it consistently.

People who want to attend these kinds of events will begin to know that the "event canceled" stickers have been put up by the government and are false information. Presumably the stickers will look the same, and also who goes and bothered to put up "canceled" stickers if they genuinely are canceled?

It may even become a cachet - "dude, our event got stickered as 'canceled' by the government" etc.

Simple way to defeat that is to just come up with a bunch of different sticker designs.

Or, you could be even more devious. The town council could start putting up fake posters in non-designated spots that would mislead people to believe that something was happening when it wasn't. That way, non-approved locations will become associated with poisoned wells. A random person wouldn't be able to trust flyers in non-approved locations.

How should a random person know which location is approved and which is not? Sure - bins and other such places are obvious, but I would expect many locations to be just as likely to confuse an average person.

The problem with this idea is that people who hang concert posters don't sticker them when there are date changes. People are just going to ignore the stickers.

Concert posters aren't a lead generation mechanism. They're awareness marketing. The point of concert posters is to get you to go to a website to buy tickets. They don't need correct information.

So they'd be combating sign pollution by putting up more signs? Doesn't seem like much of a solution. Even if they succeeded and people stopped posting up "real" posters, as soon as they stopped posting "fake" posters the "real" posters could go back up again.

Sure - it might work well. But isn't it against the law to publicly spread false information that affect someone's business? Whether it's the city, or a random person, I would expect the same rules to apply - and I would expect to get sued if I started putting "cancelled" stickers on all posters. Two wrongs do not make a right...

But isn't it against the law to publicly spread false information that affect someone's business?

Not if the city of Ghent has effected a bylaw for this specific practice. When you're part of "the state", you can do that.

It's against the law to clamp a motor vehicle you don't own, yet the council can still come along and clamp you if you don't buy a ticket in their car parks. Punishments aren't typically illegal if you violated the rules effecting that punishment. After all, it's illegal to murder people, yet the majority of US states have provisions for execution as a form of punishment.

But it's a catch-22 situation. They would have to incriminate themselves to file a lawsuit. Or if they make the argument that they weren't responsible for the poster being put up, the local government can make the same claim. "I didn't see who put it up there, so it's not my responsibility".

Part of it's brilliance is how easily defensible it is.

Not sure about "easily defensible". If the city doesn't do it legally (as in police can quickly verify who is doing that), then:

1. Person A puts up a lot of posters in an obviously illegal area where other posters are quickly "cancelled".

2. "Completely unrelated" person B waits for the person adding the "cancelled" stickers, notifies the police about suspected behaviour. For more fun mentions "strange equipement" and "patroling the area for a long time". Bonus points for doing that near/on a government building.

Making it risky for other people to put the "cancelled" stickers would force the city to either stop this, or make it legal and well known.

Edit: I assumed it was US - not sure how easy it is to scare police in Belgium with suspected "terrorism".

How about printing up a sticker that says "Support Act: Michael Bolton" and putting it on offending events

A little comment on the Ghent mayor's office intentions:

The normal way of doing things is this: When a police officer notices an illegally put up poster, he has to do all the necessary paperwork to aid the public prosecutor in his legal actions against the person or organisation who put up the poster. That's, if the responsible person or organisation is known. If not, the police officer will have to do some inverstigative work. After that it has to go to trial and could cost the defendant 120 EURO per poster, while costing the community much much more. (cleaning, police hours...)

You can see the means and hours that would have to go into this...for a poster. Still, the city wants to get rid of the problem. Hence, this idea.

It's true that from a legal point of view, the city itself is culpable of putting up stickers where it's illegal to do that. They've admitted to that, but say that it's a choice between doing the 120 EURO fine thing or the quick and more cost effective way while getting public attention for the problem they want to address and create awareness for.

And since the story was all over the news...a job well done.

Take care, Karl (pinching the ostrich)

Or to put it differently, a choice between due process and political campaigning.

I've often wondered if we could deal with graffiti in a similar way. Since it usually consists of an "artist's" tag that personally identifies him, let's start appending "has an itty-bitty wee-wee" to tags and see if the broadcast of one's tiny manhood solves the problem. :P

This was the subject of a Saturday Night Live sketch starring Rudy Giuliani, who was at the time Mayor of NYC.

"From now on, every time you write your name in graffiti on public property, we're going to put the word "Sucks" right under it. That's right. Instead of being Mr. Cool, everyone's going to think you suck."

Video at http://hotair.com/archives/2007/02/06/video-rudy-combats-gra...

No, they're going to ignore it. Rudy wasn't the first person to think of this, I'm sure.

So, what I'd want to do is find a couple acts I really hate, make a bunch of fake posters about their show, and get their "events cancelled".

Presumably you can already do the same thing and get them fined 120 EUR.

comments like that will earn you karma here, but have quite the opposite effect in real life :)

Or they could just, you know, raise fines to absurd heights so no one ever again will think about putting posters outside of designated areas.

the problem is finding someone to fine and proving they did it (see tptacek's comment on false poster on acts he hates).

maybe if every poster, that will get out on a public surface, should get a city (or whatever legal entity) issued mark/stamp on it... like some products have already, cigarettes, coffee etc. (for taxation/anti-smuggling purposes). That could alleviate false poster issue and be cheap to implement. Might as well earn some cash for the city to keep those surfaces clean / lit or whatever.

I guess if you can't find the promoter to fine, you should be helpful and inform your citizens the event is cancelled. :)

Here's a video which shows the stickers (warning:ads):

http://www.demorgen.be/dm/nl/994/stand-der-dingen/article/de...

This reminds me of the dunces cap that 37signals were putting alongside stupid or troll comments on the SvN blog. I haven't seen them do it for a long time now so perhaps it really worked.. :-)

OK, funny - but they spend money on painting over the posters. Seems to me simply raising the fines would have been more effective, and better for city finances.

But... Did they cancel the event, or didn't they? I'm confused there. Maybe they just forbid the organizers to go ahead. Maybe they really did cancel it.

No, the point of the stickers is to ruin the effectiveness of illegal postings through disinformation; it has no effect on the event itself. (Although, if enough people think the event is canceled, and no one shows up...)

...and the parent post is a perfect demonstration of that.

Here's a crazy idea: why not just let people post notices in public places to promote their events and not bother trying to enforce a bylaw against it at all?

Great idea! I'll paste my poster over top of that stop sign over there! It'll have great visibility!

Here's an idea: let's assume most people aren't idiots. That way we don't have to ban an entire sweep of activities on the basis of a marginal edge case.

> let's assume most people aren't idiots

That's where you're thinking breaks down though. There are a large enough portion of idiots to ruin things for 'the rest of us.'

And yet countless actual cities manage just fine without draconian anti-postering policies.

Pretty much for the same reasons that graffiti is illegal: Public places are often private property. Someone has to pay to sandblast or paint over those eyesores. And the broken window theory says crime increases in areas that are not well-maintained.

Wouldn't it be cheaper (stickers aren't free) and more effective to remove the poster? Nasa made a 1 million dollar pen to write in space, the Russians...

The Russians were at risk of pneumoconiosis due to breathing graphite dust and tiny little bits of eraser..

No. Labor is much more expensive than stickers and those posters are a bitch to remove.

obligatory link to set right the NASA pen thing http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp

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