Re: Responses to "Spam costs and questions" (long)

[Paul Bradley <paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk>]

> > <sigh> Ofcource what I say in a contract is "free". I can say anything I
> > want in a contract solong as the parties involved agree.
> 
> Are ads a part of the contract, though?

I wouldn`t say so, in the UK the DTI and the Director of fair trading 
regulates the market in such a way that one cannot make claims that are 
known to be false in advertisements. To use your example, if you post an 
ad saying Borscht <sp?> cures cancer, and someone buys beet from you as a 
cure, you will normally have a contract of sale which says "...beet will 
cure all cancer and the customer will regain normal health in this 
respect" etc. etc. If the customer then dies of cancer, you have breached 
that contract. However, the advertisment itself does not take the form of 
a contract, or part thereof, if you had not sold the beet, but only said 
that it cures cancer, your advertisement would have been pure protected 
speech. Besides which, anyone buying Borscht to cure cancer is 
probably better removed from the gene pool anyway ;-).

> If I enter into a sales contract with Kent to give him borsch to cure
> his cancer, and this is not an FDA-approved treatment, then this contract
> is against public policy and shouldn't be enforceable. :-)

Exactly, but of course your only real crime would be the breach of 
contract, not the FDA-Non approval, this breach would of course be a 
civil crime the penalties for which would be part of the contract or 
defined in an external "default penalties" contract which would be 
implicitly #included into the original contract.

> But to convict me of fraud, the gubmint should prove that borshch doesn't
> cure cancer.  How would one prove that?

This is why I think such a contract would not occur, even if it were a 
more sensible example (eg. a few years ago before the mainstream tests, 
saying that AZT prolonged the life of HIV carriers), more likely the 
contract would say that the AZT/Borscht etc. "increased the probability 
of cure/increased the probability of living longer" etc. This would be 
virtually impossible to disprove, unless the improvement probability 
were to be specified. To disprove that Borscht cures cancer 
would be a simple matter which I leave as an exercise to the reader ;-).

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