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Star Trek Fans Told To Stop "Spocking" Canadian $5 Bill
bellwould writes The Toronto Sun is reporting that Bank of Canada executives are urging Star Trek fans to stop altering Wilfred Laurier's face on the Canadian $5 bill to look like Spock. Although not illegal to draw on the bills, a Bank of Canada spokesperson points out that the markings may reduce effectiveness of the security features or worse, the money may not be accepted.
Why not issue commemorative $5 notes? Commemorative coins are issued in the US, although actors aren't usually on them. There is, AFAIK, no commemorative US or Canadian note like that. Stamps are more liberal in that regard. I'm sure a lot of conservatives would hate it, say it's "undignified", blah, blah... It's Canada so they might even have to get permission from the Queen; but if they don't, then why not innovate? Come on Canada. You're so cool in many other ways. Make it happen.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Other articles spin it the other way.
'Spocking' Laurier on $5 not illegal, says Bank of Canada
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/sp...
First off, Canada != US, fellow American.
Second: people and businesses can limit the forms of payment they'll accept for practical reasons all the time. As in: no bills over a certain amount, or refusing payment in pennies. Coins CAN be legal tender, but no merchant or private party MUST accept a particular form of currency. Don't want to accept $1 bills, only $5 and $10? That's fine:
http://www.snopes.com/business...
"Legal tender is the default method of payment assumed in contractual agreements involving debts and payments for goods or services unless otherwise specified."
Third: the currency is defaced. That is the whole point - it's potentially not legal currency if you've drawn all over it. If you interfere with security features in the bill and it becomes more risky to trust as valid (such as, counterfeit bills that meet other security features elsewhere on the bill)...then they are right to refuse it.
I'm kind of shocked Canada doesn't specifically outlaw defacement of the currency; the US sure does.
Please help metamoderate.
I've done a bit of system integration with bill acceptor machines, and they should be fine. They're not looking for visual spectrum stuff, or comparing a bitmap, they're checking for a finite number of specific features. Usually, it is 9 or 11 small spots that are each checked for one thing. None of them are the face visuals.
Actually, if they're spocking the old $5 bills, it's probably not going to be accepted anyways as we've moved to the new polymer bills. While for a time the old bill acceptors wouldn't accept the new bills, the new bills have pretty much taken over.
Granted, not being an artist, I have to admit I'd probably keep that $5 bill. Being a paper one it's probably close to being cycled out naturally.