[ale] M$ refund

[Jeff Lightner]

Actually superlatives like "best" are not illegal to use under Fair
Trade practices because they are not quantifiable.   It is illegal to
say something like "4 out of 5 dentists prefer Colgate to Crest" but
quite legal to say "4 out of 5 dentists surveyed prefer Colgate to
Crest" even if you skewed the survey by choosing dentists that were
ordering your toothpastes samples at a high rate.   However it would not
be illegal to say "Colgate is the greatest toothpaste ever" even if
you'd done a survey where 5 out of 5 dentists said "Colgate rots your
teeth and only a moron would use it".

Of course if your teeth rotted out and you sewed Colgate-Palmolive and
found the above survey results during discovery I daresay you (or at
least your lawyers) would become quite wealthy.

-----Original Message-----
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Jim
Popovitch
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 10:38 AM
To: ale at ale.org
Subject: Re: [ale] M$ refund

On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 10:25, Jeff Lightner <jlightner at water.com> wrote:
> I don't think I said anything about "good".  I said "anti-competitive"
> and that is dealt with in our anti-trust laws.

I used "good" implying "socially acceptable" which presumably is what
ant-competitive/anti-trust seeks to achieve.

> Your arguments sound much like the ones in old rape cases where the
> defending attorney would say "look at how she was dressed".   Having a
> desire to look pretty is NOT the same as wishing to be raped any more
> than having a desire to be in business is the same as a desire to have
> your arm twisted by a corporate bully to stay in business.

In business having a desire to look pretty can sometimes be
constituted as grounds for suit (i.e. If a company says "our products
are the best!" and then can't back it up).   Esp if the company is
raping the consumer via false adverts.

-Jim P.
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