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Jim Osborn wrote:
> I understand that commercial speech is not protected by the First
> Ammendment, the way political speech is. This has been a factor in
> the tobacco lawsuits. I wonder, though, where criticism of a product
> falls. If the bugs you point out do indeed exist, could they really
> prevent you from mentioning them?
Commercial speech doesn't have the same level of protection that
political speech does (the latter has the very very high NYT v. Sullivan
"actual malice" standard) - but that doesn't mean it has *no* protection.
Frankly - I haven't kept close track of defamation law in recent years -
but - last time I looked - the standard which applied to commercial
speech (at least here in Florida) was more or a less a negligence
standard (i.e., - to be actionable - the statement had to be false and
the speaker was required to have failed to do what a reasonable person
would have done before he made the statement - like checking things out).
In my experience - there are very few circumstances under which courts
will punish truthful speech (an employee divulging an employer's trade
secrets might be one of those few circumstances). Robyn
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