Fraud and free speech

Brian Lane nexus at eskimo.com
Mon Jun 9 07:50:58 PDT 1997



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On Sun, 8 Jun 1997 15:48:58 -0700, you wrote:

>At 5:51 AM -0700 6/8/97, William H. Geiger III wrote:
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>>In <Pine.GSO.3.95.970608053415.20770A-100000 at well.com>, on 06/08/97
>>   at 07:36 AM, Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com> said:
>>
>>>I don't think commercial speech should be treated as second-class speech.
>>>But my position is hardly surprising.
>>
>>Well I think that there are some that would confuse the issue between 1st
>>Amendment free speech and the issues surrounding fraud. Especially those
>>in government who write the laws that regulate commercial speech.
>
>The mistake has been to extend "fraud" laws to non-contract situations,
>e.g., ordinary speech (as distinguished from contracts).

  This is very true. We now live in a society that expects to be
'protected' from everything, including their own ignorance, by Big
Brother. Free Speech is just that -- free -- and should be accepted as
such. We have various private organizations that have made it their
business to oversee the truthfulness of product advertising and
quality and this is how it should be.

  I believe that we have actually given up some of our free speech
rights in order to be protected against the 'big bad companies looking
to rip you off'. This has resulted in the government making a grab for
more and more of our rights, the building of a buearucratic
infrastructure to support this grab, and a seperate society back there
in Wasington DC.

  Brian

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Brian C. Lane             http://www.eskimo.com/~nexus                      KC7TYU
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