Why is it illegal to write on money?

Factual Questions
1

From United States Code: Title 18 Part 1 Chapter 17, Section 333:

Mutilation of national bank obligations: Whoever mutilates, cuts, defaces, disfigures, or perforates, or unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of any debt issued by any national banking association, or Federal Reserve Bank, or the Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt unfit to be reissued, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.

Why is it illegal to write on US money? Isn’t this a violation of your 1st amendment rights? For example, this site: http://www.rtmark.com/dollar_hack/ has templates for you to print corporate logos in green on money, as a statement about capitalism or corporate America or whatever.

Why is this illegal?

2

Not the phrase

It’s not clear at all that writing on money is illegal without establishing that intent.

3

The intent of the law is, I suppose, to prevent you from writing a “0” after the “1” in a one dollar bill to make it look like a ten, or to stop you from cutting the corners off of a twenty and putting them on a single.

Now, just how the wording enforces that, I’m not so sure …

4

Telemark beat me to it. Writing down your grocery list on a dollar bill probably doesn’t carry the intent to deface the money.

As for the first admendment issue, all our rights ‘granted’ by the government have limits, which usually start where state interest would be compromised. In this case, the interest would be the value of U.S. currency. If money were to be defaced and pulled from circulation in large amounts, it would actually change the value of the dollar to some uncontrolled number.

5

I guess that makes sense. I really wasn’t thinking in terms of the value (ie, cost of making & circulation).

Thanks! (Doesn’t mean I’m not going to do it anyway, though)

6

There has been an amendment to this law to allow for playful defacement of coins. I used to work at a museum where those stupid souvenir penny machines were set-up. People would ask us all the time whether it was illegal to deface money like that. Indeed, there is a clause somewhere, somehow that permits the “rendering useless” of US coins so they can be made souvenirs. I guess the amusement park lobby got through to the Federal Reserve. In any case, I no longer work at the museum, so I cannot cite the relevent clause, but I’m sure there may be someone on the board who knows enough about US currency law that may be able to dredge it up.

7

The US Constitution delegates ‘powers’ to the government. ‘Rights’ inherently belong to the people.

8

I like, “or does any other thing”. LOL lets leave our options open.

9

Near as I can figure, the reason the law is there is so people won’t mark bills up (or make “chopmarks” on coins–cf. the 19th Century U. S. Trade Dollar) so as to make them unrecognizable as money or, as noted above, to misrepresent a $1 bill as a $10, for example. But there is in fact a website known as www.wheresgeorge.com which allows you a way to track your paper money (and even invites you to have a rubber stamp made up bearing the site’s URL). The web page for Where’s George includes the federal law about “defacing” money: stamping the Where’s George URL isn’t the same thing as writing an obscenity, a gang code, or a misleading denomination on a bill. (In the early 60s I once got a $1 bill with George Washington sporting a Dudley Nightshade-type handlebar mustache, and a name sign identifying him as “Batman.” :smiley:
When I was in the 5th grade I looked askance at a classmate who had bored a hole through a quarter and wore it on a chain around his neck. (42 years and I still remember his name!) But I found out years later that what he did was not against the law–as long as he didn’t try to spend the quarter.

10

Duckster posted while I slept…

Things that are granted may be taken away. Things that simply exist may be supressed, but they still exist.

I received a dollar note that has a “dialog bubble” in front of George Washington’s picture. It says, “I grew hemp.”

11

On flattening pennies and other coins, the US Mint site has this to say:

Section 331 of Title 18 of the United States code provides criminal penalties for anyone who “fraudulently alters, defaces, mutilates impairs, diminishes, falsifies, scales, or lightens any of the coins coined at the Mints of the United States.” This statute means that you may be violating the law if you change the appearance of the coin and fraudulently represent it to be other than the altered coin that it is. As a matter of policy, the U.S. Mint does not promote coloring, plating or altering U.S. coinage: however, there are no sanctions against such activity absent fraudulent intent.

Note the key words “fraudulentl intent.” In other words, it’s okay to flatten a coin, but don’t expect to be able to use it to pay for any purchases.

Section 333 covers paper money; the Bureau of Engraving and Printing goes on to say:

Under this provision, currency defacement is generally defined as follows: Whoever mutilates, cuts, disfigures, perforates, unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, Federal Reserve Bank, or Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such item(s) unfit to be reissued, shall be fined not more than $100 or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.

So, basically, you can write on bills all day long; just don’t go changing the face value or the Secret Service will getcha.

Incidentally, it is illegal to flatten Canadian coins in Canada. Penny smashers in Canada have to use blank copper/zinc disks. This is because their law is incredibly short:

  1. Every one who

(a) defaces a current coin, or

(b) utters a current coin that has been defaced,

is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.

R.S., c. C-34, s. 414.
And JS Princeton–back off on the “stupid” penny machines! We Elongated Collectors (http://www.money.org/clubs/tec.html) are a mighty bunch–fear our penny flattening power!

12

I always right on the back of random bills “IS THIS THE GOD WE TRUST?”
And my house hasn’t been surrounded by the swat team.

13

notice that white van driving by sometimes?
:wink: