guerilla clockmakers in the news

[topaz]

From the Guardian: "Undercover restorers fix Paris landmark's clock"

The network was unknown to the authorities until 2004, when the police discovered an underground cinema, complete with bar and restaurant, under the Seine.

Thanks to noeltheone for the link.

Comments

[mzrowan.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's fantastic.

And nowhere else but France would they have to do it as a guerrilla act -- everywhere else, they could just say, "Hey, we want to volunteer to restore this clock!" and *not* end up bogged down in red tape for years.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think the part I liked the most about it was that they were cleared at trial. Like, after hearing the arguments the state decided, "you know, this was really cool" and dismissed the charges? I cannot imagine that happening Stateside.

[lhn.livejournal.com]

In the US, that role is played by prosecutorial discretion, and to a lesser and more controversial extent by jury nullification. In a common law system, a judge can't (or at least isn't supposed to be able to) disregard the law on the grounds of coolness. (Though that could lead to a minimal or nominal sentence, if the option is available to the judge.)

I'm less familiar with the French civil law system. (I took a class on it, but that was more than a decade ago.) But precedent plays a much smaller role and the judge's role overlaps more with the prosecutor, so it wouldn't surprise me if they have more discretion.

[dervishspin.livejournal.com]

That is awesome!! Thank's for sharing.

Now I know there is legal precedent somewhere (even if not stateside) for when I get arrested for planting bulbs in public parks.
..not that.. you know I would admit to doing anything like that....

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Right. By "the state" I mean the party who is speaking on behalf of the state, which in this case would probably be a district attorney or some such. My observation has been that once filing suit, D.A.s (in the U.S., anyway) tend to be loath to drop charges or abandon appeals since that hurts their record of convictions, which in turn hurts their future re-election bids. So it seems really unlikely that something like that would happen in the U.S.

(All of which, of course, depends on what the "something like that" is, and I still don't know the details of the French case, and probably wouldn't be qualified to comment on them if I did :-)

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Planting flowers? Great snakes! Go back to where you came from, you GODLESS HIPPIE!

Fer cryin' out loud, what next? Soon they'll be picking up trash from the side of the road instead of leaving it there where the good Lord called it down from heaven!

[lhn.livejournal.com]

I've been puzzling out the Le Monde article (http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3224,36-982097,0.html) with the help of Google's translator. Apparently the prosecutors were reluctantly cooperating with the Centre des Monuments Nationaux in preferring charges at all, and failing to make them stick. (If I'm reading the article correctly, illegal entry into a national monument isn't itself a crime.) The actual charges wound up being, I think, vandalizing part of a gate lock ("dégradation volontaire de la gâche de fermeture de la grille")

The prosecutor seems to have thought this was stupid, given that there were obvious crimes involving stolen keys and fake credentials that they could have been charged with. It's not entirely clear to me why she lacked the power to prefer those charges. In the end, she was limited to lecturing the accused ("You'd think you were in a role-playing game, with knights! You must stop playing!"); the judge likewise admonished them that they may still be subject to prosecution.

(My inner geek is, of course, pleased at the RPG reference, and no doubt my old teacher Mme. Darson would be-- vaguely-- pleased that I knew what jeu de rôle meant without looking it up. :-) )

[lhn.livejournal.com]

My observation has been that once filing suit, D.A.s (in the U.S., anyway) tend to be loath to drop charges or abandon appeals since that hurts their record of convictions, which in turn hurts their future re-election bids. So it seems really unlikely that something like that would happen in the U.S.

I think that's true-- discretion is usually exercised in deciding whether to file charges in the first place. I can see a DA deciding not to prefer charges in an instance like this, given the lack of harm and the potential for bad publicity for the DA's office. ("DA uses taxpayer dollars to prosecute illegal clock repair!") But once the charges were filed, I suspect it would take pressure from above to get them dropped.

[vokzal.livejournal.com]

I have to say this is really cool.