False Advertising

[evilbutterfly]

Let's say you're going to your favorite store, and outside the store you see that a 3rd-party company has set up a little booth. You walk up to the booth and see a big flashing neon sign that says "PUSH THIS BUTTON AND WIN A CAR!!" right above a little red button. You push the button, thinking, "What the hell, it's worth a shot." As soon as you push it, another sign comes up out of the booth. It reads "To redeem your prize, fill out these forms!" Coming out with this new sign are a series of forms. You fill them out, giving the booth your name, address, phone number, and various other pieces of personall information. You finish all the forms and return them to the booth, and nothing happens.

In the coming days, you receive endless amounts of junk mail, telemarketer phone calls, and other annoyances. Your friends also pushed the button and got nothing but harassment. You see other people push the button while you're going to the store, and nobody ever gets anything. You don't see any announcements in the paper or anywhere about people winning anything. You are very angry.

So what do you do? You sue the owner of the booth for false advertising. Turns out nobody won, or if anybody did the booth still didn't properly warn that there were very low chances of winning (as it was legally obligated to do). You win the suit and are compensated for the booth owner's sneaky behavior.


Now let's say you're on a website and see a flashing banner that says "CLICK ME AND WIN AN IPOD!!" You click it and it gives you all sorts of spyware and spams your inbox, may be even sends email to your friends automatically. You don't win an iPod, nobody else does either. So what do you do about it? Nothing.

Why doesn't everybody sue the hell out of these ad companies? They promise things and never deliver. Even if a few people win, the sites don't properly display the rules for winning and whatnot. They just have a bunch of ads, but no warnings. This is illegal and everybody knows it, but nobody does anything. Honestly, if people start filing lawsuits, may be the ad companies will be shut down and only good, wholesome ads (like Google's) will be displayed on sites.

So who else thinks we should sue the companies that produce these lying banners?