At 9:20 PM -0800 4/24/97, Bill Frantz wrote:
What is highly amusing is the mounting evidence that alcoholic beverages in moderation are good for your health. Of course, if you are one of the small percent of the population who can't be moderate, then you should not use alcoholic beverages. But many people have bad reactions to various foods. That's no reason to forbid them or their advertising.
Obviously we libertarians fully agree with this. No advertising should ever be banned....to ban or restict any advertising, no matter how worthless or despicable the product, is clearly a violation of basic constitutional protections of free speech. (Note that the orginal grounds for restricting cigarette advertising on television and radio were on shaky grounds that the airwaves were a kind of monopoly have now been augmented by laws restricing advertising "too close" to schools and other places and other such restrictions. Including crap about requiring warnings about cigarettes and alcohol, even in non-broadcast advertisements! By this precedent, can it be long before political writings are required to carry extensive warnings? The First Amendment has become a joke.) By the way, the conventional (if flaky) wisdom in the 1950s was that cigarette smoking was good for one's health (a "digestive"). Had the FCC and FDA had the powers then that they have now, cigarette ads would have been _required_. This is the danger of the monoculture I have written about. "Anything not banned is required, anything not required is banned." As to Cypherpunks relevance, what will happen if cigarettes, alcohol, and condoms are advertised on the Web? (Whoops, strike condom ads...they were once banned, but are now required.) Kill them all...they are unworthy of life. --Tim May There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."