The Aesthetics of Guerrilla Tagging

Guerrilla Artist Banksy Caught Up In eBay Scandal - Guardian

Now here's my problem with this type of scandal, even though it involves an artist who's MO is to generally remain anonymous while tagging various places in interesting ways. It's not so much that someone is attempting to profit off the artist's work, particularly since you can grab jpegs of the artwork just about anywhere. It's that what was for sale was originally intended for sale by the artist himself. There's a difference between someone who goes out and silk-screens a bunch of t-shirts and someone who takes from a limited print run of the work to sell at inflated prices. I like Banksy and I like the aesthetic he represents but there are legitimate differences between the kind of guerrilla art Banksy and those who copy him do and attempting to profit off of work that was produced by the artist himself, without his permission, without his knowledge and certainly without paying for the work originally. It's akin to stealing a comic from a comic store and attempting to sell it online yourself. It's not simply an issue of legality or morality but one of aesthetics.