-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In <19970608071045.57576@bywater.songbird.com>, on 06/08/97 at 07:10 AM, Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com> said:
On Sun, Jun 08, 1997 at 08:42:49AM -0500, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote: > "William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@amaranth.com> writes:
In <199706071754.MAA01524@manifold.algebra.com>, on 06/07/97 at 12:54 PM, ichudov@Algebra.COM (Igor Chudov @ home) said:
There is a lot of commercial compelled speech. For example, mutual funds must say that past performance is not a guarantee of future results.
Do you find this kind of compelled speech unconstitutional?
Well I don't know how Duncan feels about it but I think it's highly unconstutional.
I can still publish a book and claim that borshch (Russian beet soup) cures cancer. However if I also offer to sell beets my mail order, the FDA can bite me. It's "constitutional" because it protects the olygopoly of the large drug companies with political connections.
Drug regulation muddies the waters quite a bit -- the issue is commercial speech in general. And that issue is a more basic one -- some entity (the government, in this case) is designated as the "enforcer of contracts". Contracts are special documents that by their very nature involve "enforcement". What you say in a contract binds you. What you say outside of a contract does not. What you say in a contract is, therefore, and by definition, not "free".
<sigh> Ofcource what I say in a contract is "free". I can say anything I want in a contract solong as the parties involved agree. What is controled is my actions not my speech. If I enter into a "contract" to provide borshch on the promise that it will cure your cancer *knowing* that it will not then I am guilty of fraud. This fraud is caused by my not honoring the contract. The government does not have a right to restrict my speech in a contract only as an arbitrator of contracts do they have a right to restrict my actions (ie: that I live up to the conditions of the contract). - -- - --------------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html - --------------------------------------------------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3a Charset: cp850 Comment: Registered_User_E-Secure_v1.1b1_ES000000 iQCVAwUBM5rSwY9Co1n+aLhhAQHilwP9Fk67C2DaN3c8n4xTFvs/D0YeRAs6N85e YooM+RAWATwuD2r7AsgB3mpxyRd954c3JIs2XLY+3nHVxiOpzBCj5LIFc8k0payS 0kBokWC+4QZDcJeZkDzD1D9XUcFI028dM5oaqeLlymtRECWwfq/OwTrpXbriW+rb W3kqClU8HNA= =nb0O -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----