Art crime / Posted by Rich
A Czech judge dismissed charges on Tuesday against seven artists accused of scaremongering by Czech Television after they hacked into a live broadcast in June and superimposed images of a nuclear explosion on a picture of mountains being used as the backdrop for a weather forecast, Agence France-Presse reported. At the end of a six-hour hearing in the Trutnov regional court, the judge, Stanislava Suchankova, said: ‘The images of the explosion could not have created public unrest. People were rather amused at how easy it was to disrupt the signal.’ Cheers and applause welcomed the decision, but the state prosecutor, Zdena Hourova, said the state would consider an appeal. The artists of the Ztohoven collective had faced a maximum sentence of three years in jail. The stunt, which was posted on the Internet, attracted international notice and won them a national prize for young artists.
from the new york times