Camden is seek to serve the anti-social behaviour orders, which usually target beggars and homeless drug addicts, on executives from BMG and Sony following complaints from residents.
Sony Music Entertainment's managing director Catherine Davis and marketing director Joe Headland were named by Camden Council as targets, along with BMG UK & Ireland's Lucy Hansford, who works in the marketing department. Camden Council said it had been informed that these people were responsible for commissioning flyposting.
The executives will face potential prison sentences if they break the ASBOs. Sony and BMG declined to comment on the story.
The move has been welcomed by pressure group Keep Britain Tidy, which has long pushed for record companies, deemed to be the worst offenders in the country, to clean up their acts over flyposting.
While flyposting is illegal, there are seldom successful prosecutions. Record companies distance themselves from the practice and teams of casual workers are usually employed to do the pasting. There are now moves by some labels to work with councils on finding legal sites for flyposting.
Alan Woods, chief executive of the Keep Britain Tidy campaign, said: "There's a common myth that struggling artists, political campaigns and local promoters do the most fly-posting. They don't. It's large multinational record companies that smear these ads all over city centres -- and then leave us with the bill to clean them up."
Camden Council estimates that Sony saves 拢3m on traditional advertising costs, while BMG saves as much as 拢5.6m just from their flyposting operations in Camden, leaving the council to pick up the estimated 拢250,000 cost for cleaning up.
Dame Jane Roberts, leader of Camden Council, said: "Flyposting is a similar sort of behaviour to graffiti, in that it involves the illegal and non-approved use of property, degrading that property and making an area seem uncared for and an unpleasant place to be. In addition, it is clear that the people who are undertaking flyposting have no regard for the effect of their activities."
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