City of Toronto cracks down on illegal concert posters

technically someone with beef looking to cost a venue money could poster "on their behalf" and get them fined.

realistically I doubt it would happen

I thought vandalizing other's property was considered art?

time to start flyering for ficticious events taking place at Rob Ford's house...

there is a big difference between some band putting up paper signs near the venue that they will be using, and giant nightclubs postering giant glossy posters (often 6 at a time) across town from their club. I'm sure it's bad in many areas, but try walking down King West into Parkdale - there's glossy posters everywhere for everything from new albums and nightclubs to big movies and beer promos.

it's very clear that major advertising companies are just shrugging off the billboard and sign laws.

Maybe Dr. Jamie will go back to selling drugs now.

Bands have been known to promote themselves on this marvelous thing I've heard of called the internet. It's paperless!
The City spends a lot of money removing these posters. Fines are appropriate to recover costs.
I mean, people pay to have posters put up. Why shouldn't they pay to have them removed?

I'd propose the following: institute a bylaw that will charge a removal fee per poster to any posterer. So when City workers (or contractors) go around to remove posters, they collect the posters but also collect data about numbers of posters, tally it up, and send a bill to whoever is identifiable as the posterer. With digital cameras etc. that's not hard.

Could have different levels of charge for different kinds or size of poster too. A letter sized sheet of paper stapled to a wooden pole is easy to remove (and these are often put up by indie bands or smaller orgs.) An enormous full-gloss poster that's pasted to a metal pole or the side of a building is much harder to remove and should cost more.

Of course, no charge at all for using legit public message boards.

This would give several financial incentives:

1) to the posterer to poster more judiciously
2) to the posterer to remove his or her own posters
3) to the City (or contractor) to collect accurate information on posterers (which can be used to identify the really problematic ones)
4) to bands, venues and event promoters to use other methods to promote their shows

Why not go after the venues? After all, they benefit directly from the posters.

Make the removal fee reasonable. Base it on cost recovery. But if parties refuse to pay it, apply a fine, and continue to apply increasing fines for additional infractions.

I'm all for reasonable use of public space, but clearly postering gets out of hand.

And those "posters" which are in fact hard board things screwed into poles and stupid lawn signs that pop up on public space? (1-800 Got Junk, for example)? That's a no-brainer for me: $500 per infraction. Stop it.

And illegal billboards? I don't know how it's possible to install so many (apparently there are thousands) without the City knowing about it, but for me this is also very easy: put out notice that, beginning on June 1, a sweep of all illegal billboards in the city will be conducted.

Illegal billboards will be identified and removed.
Any property owner with an illegal billboard will have removal fee added to their tax bill, and be subject to a fine.
Any illegal advertiser will be have to pay a hefty surcharge to continue to advertise legitimately in the City on legal billboards or on TTC.
Any identifiable company that erects illegal billboards will be subject to a per-infraction fine.

And I'll bet you you'd see a flurry of billboard removal well in advance of June 1! Those billboards are ugly, ugly, ugly. The fewer the better!