Coachella desires billboard promoting free STD testing eliminated

Coachella organizers have known as for the elimination of a billboard close to the music pageant web site promoting free sexually transmitted illness testing companies, the group that paid for the billboard mentioned.

The Los Angeles-based nonprofit AIDS Healthcare Basis put the billboard up on the westbound 10 Freeway on March 26 and acquired a request to take away it by March 28. The group mentioned in a information launch that the billboard will stay up throughout the subsequent few weeks for each pageant weekends regardless of opposition.

The billboard reads “Catch greater than vibes?” and contains a picture of the favored music and humanities pageant Coachella, held yearly in Indio. The billboard directs viewers to a hyperlink the place they will discover out extra about free STD testing.

“It doesn’t assist anybody to bury their heads within the desert sand and faux individuals aren’t having intercourse,” mentioned basis president and co-founder Michael Weinstein. “We would like everybody to make use of condoms and observe safer intercourse, but when they don’t, we additionally need them to know the place to get STD examined simply and without spending a dime.”

Goldenvoice, the corporate that organizes and promotes Coachella, didn’t reply to a request for remark. Jason Farmer, vp of selling for the muse, mentioned an legal professional for Goldenvoice’s mum or dad firm requested the billboard’s elimination.

The legal professional claimed the billboard represented a copyright infringement and requested for the billboard to be taken down inside 48 hours, Farmer mentioned, or threatened to take authorized motion. Farmer additionally mentioned the legal professional might have felt the billboard solid a adverse mild on the pageant.

Farmer mentioned he’s not conscious of any authorized motion taken towards the muse as of Wednesday. The house owners of the billboard additionally don’t plan on taking the design down, he mentioned.

The billboard doesn’t identify the pageant, however the AIDS Healthcare Basis’s information launch describes it as “Coachella-themed.” The billboard is designed to achieve pageant goers as they go away the Indio space.

Coachella, occurring this 12 months on the weekends April 12-14 and April 19 -21, attracts a mean of 125,000 every day guests and was first held in 1999.