The Individual Posted October 24, 2009 Report Share Posted October 24, 2009 (edited) I was reading this article in The New York Times about the ethics of advertising - http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/opinion/...l?th&emc=th Should the company who produces fake advertisements to deceive consumers be punishable by law? It is a form of fraud isn't it? Edited October 24, 2009 by The Individual Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jake_Ellison Posted October 24, 2009 Report Share Posted October 24, 2009 (edited) From the article: Deceiving consumers has long been illegal. Guidelines demanding that people who endorse a product for money disclose their connections with advertisers date back to 1980 — way before the age of tweets. ...... Advertisers are the drivers of this new trend. The onus should be on them to ensure that blogs pitching their stuff warn readers about the commercial motivation of the endorsements. But disclosure is a reasonable demand to make in any medium. It protects consumers and bolsters the bonds of trust between writers and their audience. That's definitely not fraud, and the FTC has no business telling anyone to inform readers about their motivation. That's not fraud prevention, it's freedom of expression violation. Why someone is telling you something is irrelevant to whether it is fraud, what they are telling you is the only thing that matters. The liberal media's continuous war on commercially motivated people is disgusting. Why aren't they asking for the gov. to force them to reveal their motivation, every time they write an article? Would it be OK for the gov. to prosecute every journalist, if it turns out their motivation wasn't what they said it is? (for instance if someone claims they are trying to help inform the viewers, when they stand on the edge of the ocean in the middle of the hurricane, or camp out on the lawn of the parents of an abducted child for days, should every journalist there be hauled to jail? Should every talking head be sent to jail the second they fail to inform the viewers that their main motivation for speaking on any subject is ratings? What about every time someone on TV fakes outrage, compassion, etc? Should they be forced to mention that the motivation for their outrage was a calculated plan of playing to the viewwers' emotions? It is just as absurd as forcing someone in the middle of a commercial to take the time and say things that they have no interest in saying. Fraud would be lying about the specifics of a product that is offered for sale, not omitting to list the reasons why someone is endorsing something. Edited October 24, 2009 by Jake_Ellison Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Individual Posted October 24, 2009 Author Report Share Posted October 24, 2009 So for example, it would be a fraud if an advertisement of a new medical product presented false benefits of consuming the product? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Individual Posted October 24, 2009 Author Report Share Posted October 24, 2009 (edited) How about this? http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/24/education/24baby.html?hp People bought the Baby Einstein videos because Disney claimed the videos were educational. But it was not and therefore Disney did not fulfill its claim. Is it a fraud when Disney marketed its Baby Einstein videos as educational when results have shown otherwise? Edited October 24, 2009 by The Individual Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jake_Ellison Posted October 24, 2009 Report Share Posted October 24, 2009 So for example, it would be a fraud if an advertisement of a new medical product presented false benefits of consuming the product? False benefits of the measurable variety, such as claiming that it cures, or prevents, AIDS, or cancer, or whatever other well documented disease that shows up on a test. Not claims such as "it makes you feel nice". If someone believes that a Placebo makes them feel nice, it might just work, so it's not fraud. The most widespread scam is the low price + shipping / guaranteed refund scam those TV pitch-men use. While the FTC is busy making sure we know everyone's commercial motivations, these people inflate shipping costs to tens of times the actual cost of shipping, hiding the real price of the transaction from the buyer. (and when you take advantage of the "money back guarantee", they charge you again, for another 100 or so dollars) That can constitute fraud (depending on what the actual sale process is when people order the product, on the phone), and it's happening on TV, not online. Another big one involves carbon offsets, specifically the various methods which claim to "calculate" someone's carbon footprint and "eliminate" it. I'd love to see the NYT address that one. I don't think it would be out of the question for some court precedents to be set, that there is no connection between money payed to "offset your footprint", and the Earth's temperature, which is the explicit claim of these organizations (at least in some cases, in which the use of the money is demonstrably urelated) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jake_Ellison Posted October 24, 2009 Report Share Posted October 24, 2009 (edited) How about this? http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/24/education/24baby.html?hp People bought the Baby Einstein videos because Disney claimed the videos were educational. But it was not and therefore Disney did not fulfill its claim. Is it a fraud when Disney marketed its Baby Einstein videos as educational when results have shown otherwise? No, I can name half a dozen things contained in that NYT article that are far more deceptive than saying that a video about animals is educational. (the main one is implying that they measured the results, and proved that the vids didn't help in the least...they obviously couldn't have, that would require putting some babies into sensory deprivation for a nice long while, while some other babies are watching the videos in adjacent dark rooms) In fact, come to think of it, it is educational for a two year old to watch animals on TV. At worst, it helps him learn early in life that Disney products are trite and clichéd, and should be avoided at all cost, long before he gets to Hannah Montana and Desperate Housewives Edited October 24, 2009 by Jake_Ellison Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Individual Posted October 24, 2009 Author Report Share Posted October 24, 2009 (edited) So the bottom line is whatever a company claims its products can do, even if it is horrendously untrue, isn't a fraud? If it is, then I don't understand. Isn't fraud an intentional deception made for personal gain or damage to another individual? The consumers were cheated out of their money. They bought what they thought was advertised when in reality the advertisement manipulated certain facts about the products. Edited October 24, 2009 by The Individual Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidOdden Posted October 24, 2009 Report Share Posted October 24, 2009 So the bottom line is whatever a company claims its products can do, even if it is horrendously untrue, isn't a fraud?No, the bottom line is that a company cannot make a material false claim. For instance, if you sell a pistol under the representation that it was made by famous gunsmith Nock when actually it was made by incompetent gunsmith Glorp, that is fraud. It is a claim of fact which would reasonably be relied on by the buyer in making the decision whether or not to buy the gun. In this context, a material false claim would be something like "This video has been scientifically proven to improve the IQ of children by 20 points" or "This video has been endorsed by the American Pediatricians Association". I don't believe that the claim "is educational" is meaningful (thus it is not actually a claim of fact) and cannot be objectively shown to be false. Consider the alternative sales pitch: "This movie is entertaining", applied to, say "My Dinner with Andre". Anybody with a lick of sense will recognize that the movie was not entertaining, but anybody with a lick of sense will also not rely on such puffery -- there simply is no material claim implied by saying that something is "entertaining", "exciting", "provocative", etc. The same goes with "educational". Claims of being "in color" (two colors: black, and white) or being "120 minutes long" (that's how long it took them to put the movie together, not how long it runs) are claims of objective fact which buyers might reasonably rely on. Those are the sorts of claims that could constitute fraud. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Individual Posted October 24, 2009 Author Report Share Posted October 24, 2009 So for example, it would be a fraud if an advertisement of a new medical product presented false benefits of consuming the product? This is a fraud then right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidOdden Posted October 24, 2009 Report Share Posted October 24, 2009 This is a fraud then right?Could be (depending on the claim). However, a fraud also has to be knowing. If you are unaware that the claim is actually false, it does not constitute a lie / fraud. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Individual Posted October 24, 2009 Author Report Share Posted October 24, 2009 Could be (depending on the claim). However, a fraud also has to be knowing. If you are unaware that the claim is actually false, it does not constitute a lie / fraud. Okay, thanks, I got it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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