From: 18084TM@msu.edu (Tom)
Subject: Vandalizing the sky
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Dale sez;
>Mr. Hathaway's post is right on the money, if a little lengthy.  In short,
>an orbiting billboard would be trash, in the same way that a billboard on
>the Earth is trash.  Billboards make a place look trashy.  That is why there
>are laws in many places prohibiting their use.  The light pollution
>complaints are mainly an attempt to find some tangible reason to be against
>orbiting billboards because people don't feel morally justified to complain
>on the grounds that these things would defile the beauty of the sky.

I don't buy it.  If the things had no value at all, people wouldn't
spend money to make them. So their lack of value is just your
opinion, not an actual fact, which is neither a philisophical or
legal basis for prohibiting them.

On the other hand, I lived in OakBrook IL for a while, where zoning
laws prohibit billboards, as you mention above.  I think it was a
fine law, despite it's contradictory basis.

I would guess that the best legal and moral basis for protest would
be violation of private property.  "I bought this house, out in
the boondocks, specifically to enjoy my hobby, amateur astronomy.  Now
this billboard has made that investment worthless, so I want the
price of the property, in damages."  It wouldn't take too many
succesful cases like that to make bill-sats prohibitively expensive.

-Tommy Mac
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Tom McWilliams 517-355-2178 wk   \ They communicated with the communists,
18084tm@ibm.cl.msu.edu 336-9591 hm \ and pacified the pacifists. -TimBuk3
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