Different Day, Same Shit.

Graffiti means a lot of different things to different people and how it's used - or even its mere placement - brings out a wide variety of reactions from people.

Graffiti, at its core, is vandalism, since it involves defacing a public or private area without permission. The presence of graffiti marks an area as run-down and unkempt. The longer it stays on a surface, the further that image is embedded into the conscious of passersby.

In hotly-contested gang areas, it's a demarcation of territory to be respected on pain of conflict and possible death. Crossing out another gang's "tag" with your own is grounds for deadly retaliation.

Graffiti is also an art form, as evinced by the colorful, ingenious and expressive works found throughout countless urban environs. Some graffiti artists manage to gain national and global fanfare for their works. Kobra, Banksy and David Choe, for starters.

Graffiti is also a way for the traditionally voiceless to voice their opinions and vent. Whether it's frustration with law enforcement, an impromptu and brief eulogy for friends and family passed, or to reaffirm one's identity, it's often done with a can of spray paint and a fleeting moment.

If the graffiti happens to be of the sort the likes of Banksy would produce, it's often admired and photographed by passersby. Otherwise, it's often ignored until the property owner or another graffiti artist or tagger covers it up or tags over it.

Sometimes, the underlying dynamics surrounding graffiti and assumptions about those who are most likely to do it...makes people uncomfortable.

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Grant Henry is an Atlanta-area artist and owner of Sister Louisa's Church of the Living Room and Ping Pong Emporium, a church-themed bar and lounge located in the Old Fourth Ward, not far from Ebenezer Baptist Church and The King Center.

Henry and a fellow patron at his bar covered up the above graffiti posted on a building located on the corner of Irwin and Randolph Street, after it had, in his words, "brought fear to the core of my being."

"Brought fear to the core of my being." As a gentleman of color, I pondered this statement. Exactly what does Grant Henry have to fear from a simple tag left behind by someone obviously affected by the outcome of the Zimmerman trial?

In Henry's own words:

Last night around 10:00pm I drove up Randolph and at the corner of Irwin saw the graffiti that brought fear to the core of my being, fear that riots could change the face of our neighborhood in the shadow of The Martin Luther King Center.

Many thoughts went through my head:
1: Who owns the building?
2. Could I be arrested for covering it up?
3. Is covering evil graffiti justified?
4. Should I call the city?
5. Should I get permission from someone?

Out of fear that this evil message would spread like wildfire, I got home and grabbed a can of black spray paint,went to CHURCH and grabbed a witness, then went back to the scene and painted over the graffiti.

I was running to my car after blacking out the hate...then bolted back to add the (heart symbol) to justify that my graffiti was not compounding the message of evil.

When the adrenaline ceased from the fear that I felt, I found out that at the exact moment of adding the (heart symbol), the Zimmerman NOT GUILTY Verdict was announced.

Whoever owns the building, i am willing to pay to have the wall painted over the graffiti.

I apologize to whomever, but I would probably do it again to try to nip danger in the bud and to ensure that the positive we are trying to build In our City is not lost to the ignorance of a few.

"The ignorance of a few."

In light of the turmoil and trauma surrounding the Zimmerman case, people have chosen to vent in their own ways, many of them extraordinarily productive, others in the most destructive way possible.

I don't condone graffiti done in public or private venues without permission. However, I do understand a person's need to vent, especially after an emotionally charged event like this. The individual who left the message "Fuck APD RIOT 4 TRAYVON" was venting.

With a bit of black paint, Mr. Henry, in effect, silenced that individual's voice.

That's what gets to me. The fact that someone's voice can be silenced wholesale by someone else who hasn't shared any of the trials, tribulations and experiences of that person, after invoking an international black icon for peace and equality to justify his own actions, gets to me.

Black voices are constantly silenced, muffled, moderated and curated by others who simply don't feel comfortable with these voices ringing loud and unfiltered. Apparently, Mr. Henry just didn't feel comfortable with that so-called "message of evil" being left behind in his neighborhood.

I'm sure like so many others in his position, Mr. Henry's intentions were rather noble. While many of history's major issues are resolved through the hot fires of violence, many of history's issues have also been settled through peaceful means. Many people have clutched their pearls over the possibility of violent riots, but people who chose to stand in solidarity with Trayvon Martin and others like him have chosen the route of peaceful protest. I'm sure Mr. Henry did not want to see the Old Fourth Ward or any other neighborhood die in the white-hot fires of anger, frustration, misplaced vengeance and hatred.

With that said, that doesn't justify speaking for another by censoring that person's message. In fact, the only "message of evil" I see is one consisting of three black bars...and a heart symbol. I'm not feeling the love, here.

I realize I'm probably a day late and a dollar short on this issue, but better late than never.

Big media and its allies in Congress are billing the Internet Blacklist Legislation as a new way to prevent online infringement. But innovation and free speech advocates know that this initiative is nothing more than a dangerous wish list that will compromise Internet security while doing little or nothing to encourage creative expression.

As drafted, the legislation would grant the government and private parties unprecedented power to interfere with the Internet's domain name system (DNS). The government would be able to force ISPs and search engines to redirect or dump users' attempts to reach certain websites' URLs. In response, third parties will woo average users to alternative servers that offer access to the entire Internet (not just the newly censored U.S. version), which will create new computer security vulnerabilities as the reliability and universality of the DNS evaporates.

It gets worse: Under SOPA's provisions, service providers (including hosting services) would be under new pressure to monitor and police their users’ activities. While PROTECT-IP targeted sites “dedicated to infringing activities,” SOPA targets websites that simply don’t do enough to track and police infringement (and it is not at all clear what would be enough). And it creates new powers to shut down folks who provide tools to help users get access to the Internet the rest of the world sees (not just the “U.S. authorized version”).

To summarize, it's yet another attempt to return the Internet to the days of America Online's "walled gardens." Anyone old enough to remember those free floppy disks and CDs will remember how there used to be two separate Internet experiences for AOL users: one was the walled garden portal that had AOL-supplied content on AOL's own mini-browser, and the rest of the World Wide Web, available to those who were brave enough to open up Internet Explorer.

Or better still, it's an attempt by major content providers to turn the Internet into the same closed and regulated resource as cable television. It's a place where resources like Hulu and YouTube don't exist, and NBCUniversal and Comcast are more than happy to feed you content, on their terms. Like most things in life and legislation, the push for SOPA/PROTECT-IP comes from the pocketbooks of corporate interests.

SOPA/PROTECT-IP effectively gives copyright holders greater leeway in having a site it believes to be in the business of infringing upon its content removed, and it places greater impetus on domain registrars and Internet service providers to remove or block said websites. It also extends secondary liability to third-party groups who were formerly immune under existing laws.

As for the promise that it doesn't expand secondary liability, that's nice to say but it's simply untrue. By its very nature, the entire purpose of the bill is to extend secondary liability to third parties that had previously been almost entirely immune from such liability: ad networks, payment processors, search engines and ISPs now face liability if they do not disconnect service from certain websites. That is, without a doubt, a pretty massive expansion of secondary liability, no matter how many times the drafters of this Act insist it's not.

That's right. Even search engines like Google can get put on the hook for failing to remove "infringing links and/or content."

The most worrying aspect of SOPA/PROTECT-IP is its promotion of regulatory capture of Internet technologies, causing innovations that happen to run afoul of entertainment industry interests to remain shelved for good. These acts also allow for selective enforcement of copyright, enabling it as a tool to shut down organizations and individuals who say the wrong things about the wrong people. I can see bloggers getting shut down due to dubious copyright infringement claims, without the due process available to vet those claims as being false.

Check out the House and Senate bills in the links provided.