"Theft" of Free Newspapers (was Re: Student Protests Against Horowitz Ad)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Charles Brown wrote:
>
>>How is the direct action of destroying the papers "self-defeating" 
>>, except with respect to the opinion of those of the predominanly 
>>mental intellectual strata who have a fetish about the written word 
>>?
>
>Wow, that's kind of scary Charles. Did you ever read Marx's stuff on 
>the virtues of a free press?
>
>Doug

Marx didn't condemn an act of stealing newspapers from racks & 
destroying them for political or non-political purposes, however.  As 
a matter of fact, even prosecutors in this quintessentially 
capitalist nation committed to the war on crimes have been reluctant 
to prosecute "thieves," when what's "stolen" was *free* newspapers 
such as the Brown _Daily Herald_:

*****   Legal and Economic Aspects in Theft of Newspapers:
Using a Model of Newspaper Value

Robert G. Picard
Turku School of Economics
and
Stephen Lacy
Michigan State University

...Despite the significance of the theft issue, prosecutors typically 
do not bring charges for newspaper thefts of free newspapers, 
reasoning that one cannot "steal" items of no price (Garneau, 1994, 
p. 15, Stein, 1995).  In 1995, for example, prosecutors refused to 
prosecute individuals who stole 8,700 copies of Michigan Daily, 
saying specifically that since "the papers were offered to the public 
free, they have no value for larceny purposes" (Fitzgerald, 1996, p. 
44)....

<http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.tukkk.fi/media/Picard/Publication%2520and%2520Paper%2520Files/Newspaper%2520Theft.pdf+%22theft+of+newspapers%22+racks&hl=en> 
*****

Yoshie