-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In <v03102804afc0fc8e1db0@[207.167.93.63]>, on 06/08/97 at 05:27 PM, Tim May <tcmay@got.net> said:
At 4:14 PM -0700 6/8/97, William H. Geiger III wrote:
Well I would have to dissagre. Advertisements should be covered under contract law as verbal contracts. If I advertise that "X" does "Y" but it really does "Z" then this is clearly fraudulent behavior.
When I was growing up, advertisements that a product would make one attractive to women, for example, were treated as marketing jive. And we were all taught the old saw, "If Johhny told you to jump off a cliff, would you?" (This along with "sticks and stones" formed the basis of my proto-libertarian view.)
An advertisement is a tease, not a promise. If a advertisement for a Pentium says it will run Macintosh software and run it at 600 Mhz, the proper response is skepticism, not demanding a law be passed to stop such advertisements.
The key lies in proper contracts, not in regulating speech.
(Oh, and it almost goes without saying that the same "lies" William and others are so worried about in "commercial" speech happen all the time in non-commerical speech. For every example of where commercial speech involves lies or fraud, I can find similar or fully equivalent non-commercial examples, ranging from lies like "I love you" to get a partner into bed to deliberate misstatements to mislead an opponent. Why should such "lies" be protected while putatively commercial speech is to be subjected to an increasing number of limitations?)
So what you are saying that if I call up Widgits, Inc. and order product "X" that they advertizes does "Y". They instead send me product "X" that does "Z" not "Y" then I should have no recource? I should atleast be able to get my money back as they have not sold me the product that they claimed to be selling (clear violation of the "contract" between buyer and seller). I have no problem with them saying their product does "Y" but if I spend my hard earned money on it then it best do what they say it does. - -- - --------------------------------------------------------------- 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 iQCUAwUBM5uCfo9Co1n+aLhhAQG6XgP3f67O8YEkHd+e2uXJAfEB77of86QeOmhI AOkK3tjVEejkqsJZghoda2FnKC/xmdUxJut28zkGs+6r6Ua5sxc8GL72tqlESF5V vtnRIq1ushH4plUj/pjAzFI8G78ByNNg1dGpVIWsXeZSKwwFNNp39ANufnSf0osn q3Ts0DJM1Q== =qVti -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----