Welcome to a new semester everybody, but enough of that, here’s what I’m complaining about today.

Sony, one the biggest electronics and entertainment giants in the world has been caught in what appears to be a very serious scandal revolving around it’s latest product in the video game industry, the PSP.

The PSP, or Playstation Portable, is one of the top selling products in the video game industry, but revolving around this product is a controversy centered around its advertising campaign.

Maybe you’ve seen them; graffiti on the streets of San Francisco, caricatures of a kid using a PSP in an unusual way, opening it up like a jack in the box, or licking it like a lollipop. Basically, they were all images that had no Sony logos or any other way to affiliate the ads to the corporate giant.

Basically the ads were marketed as graffiti, people were supposed to think of it as vandalism instead of as a marketing ploy designed to get people to buy the PSP.

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Sony’s spokeswoman Molly Smith has told publications that the space was paid for and was not in fact vandalism; however the Inquirer confirmed that in the city of Philadelphia at the very least, Sony did not gain permission ahead of time for its ads.

The problem I have with this situation is that regardless of whether or not you paid for the space, graffiti has for a long time been a problem in many of America’s major cities. For a corporation to be paying for this type of vandalism in order to sell a product, they are taking a huge step backward from the work that’s been made to put an end to graffiti, and in a sense they are telling people that it’s ok to vandalize public or private property.

For years people have been taking lessons from figures in the public eye; when one person does something of great notice, whether it’s considered right or wrong in the public eye there are always copycats out there who will spread the message they received around the country.

From this one incident I can foresee hundreds of other graffiti ads emerging in cities around the world, taking us into the worse streak of vandalism that this country has ever seen. Then again, maybe I’m wrong, maybe we won’t have any copycats, and maybe this was a one-time thing that will never happen again. Does it make it right what Sony did? That depends on your perspective, but does it make it dangerous? I would have to say yes. Welcome to the new semester Skyline, and until next time, this has been, and will continue to be, “I’m Mentioning.”