New York City Fired Up Over Sony Graffiti Ads. Wants $20K in Restitution

New York City doesn™t take crap from anyone, especially if it is in the form of graffiti. In a recent news article posted here by GamerNode, Sony was reported in hiring artists to spray paint PSP graffiti in urban city locations. This caused some serious concern by some of the citizenry as protests arose about the ads. New York City has gone beyond a mere protest and has taken more aggressive against Sony Corp. Peter Vallone Jr., a Queens councilman told the New York Post that, “Children are impressionable, and if they see a wall with graffiti on it and they don’t know that it’s done with permission, it could very well lead to them believing that it’s OK for them to do it. Vallone Jr., stated that he wants Sony to take down the ads and pay $20,000 into the city™s anti-graffiti program. Sound a little harsh? According to a research report submitted by the New York Department for Transportation, regarding process and procedure of offenders: Large or significant pieces of graffiti are photographed to provide evidence if the vandal is caught and prosecuted. A record is made of the time taken to clean the graffiti and the cost of the materials, and both pieces of information are submitted to the court. People found guilty in court of fare evasion, graffiti and vandalism, may be required to report to their local Precinct (police station) and may, as part of Community Service, be required to paint over or remove graffiti. It looks like the Sony ad people may be cleaning some graffiti off of the walls in their Armani suits in the not too distant future. According the report, a poll of just four of the many city government agencies said their expenses were over $6 million to remove and clean graffiti. The total costs of all agencies was not given. Sony has responded to the complaints of their ads by stating that all it was doing was to take a different approach to advertising.