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?) --Tim May There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws. Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!" ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- 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."