Fraud and free speech

[Kent Crispin]

On Sun, Jun 08, 1997 at 06:14:59PM -0500, William H. Geiger III wrote:
>In <v03102802afc0e602d172@[207.167.93.63]>, on 06/08/97 
>   at 03:48 PM, Tim May <tcmay at got.net> said:
[...]
>>Contracts, with clearly stated conditions and with judgeable or
>>falsifiable/testable conditionals, are a matter for the courts (private
>>courts, in fact), but vague promises, advertisements, propaganda, etc.
>>are not.
>
>>Clear now?
>
>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.
>
>The difficulty is in proving that "X" does "Z" and not "Y" but that is an
>exercise left to the civil courts.

I agree that advertisements are in many cases a verbal contract ("does
0-60mph in 5 seconds flat"), but this seems to be intrinsically messy. 
There aren't any simple, clear-cut rules that separate advertising
from other speech. 

But the fundamental principle that says "redress is available for speech
that causes harm" seems fairly clean.  That cuts across advertising,
salespersons lies, libel/slander, yelling "fire" in a theater -- a
whole gamut of free speech issues.  Spam falls under such a rule, as
well.  Of course, the issue of prior restraint is orthogonal to this 
rule... 

-- 
Kent Crispin				"No reason to get excited",
kent at songbird.com			the thief he kindly spoke...
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