[natecavanaugh]

As an abstract concept, a company is a collection of individuals who have formed an agreement to perform certain actions with the intention of profit (profit may or may not be the core purpose of company though; eg the quote "Profit is like oxygen. You need it to survive, but if you think that oxygen is the purpose of your life then you’re missing something").

A sole proprietor pushing his services is the simplest example of being paid for advertising that is also clearly free speech. Where would you draw this line?

[Red_Leaves_Flyy]

A person shouting about their wares at a market (iow a sole propietor advertising their products through direct to customer advertising in a shopping area) is different than a multi-million ad designed and produced by dozens of people including professional social engineers that have studied psychology at the worlds top universities all so widget Co. can sell more widgets.

I don't have a problem with people barking about their products when I'm at a market. But I do have problems with just about everything about modern corporate advertising. Merely listing every individual aspect I take offense too would take hours.

I draw the line at the point where anything is exchanged, given, or recieved, tangible or otherwise, to allow someone/something/some co, to display, demonstrate, brand, or otherwise make known anything through an intermediary.

To clarify. Having generic, unobtrusive signs pointing to food courts around a sports Arena where one can purchase food, that may or may not be served in branded containers is acceptable. Neon signs, or banners, or full advertisements on big screens, etc advertising some company that is not doing any business directly with the attendants at said Arena is unpalatable to me. Likewise, selling refreshments with branding foranything besides the establishment selling the item, or the company that manufactured the item is ridiculous.

[natecavanaugh]

I still think there are some problems with your definition, and I'm thinking strictly from a legal point of view. There's so much manipulation that can happen from a sole proprietorship that wouldn't be allowed by your definition, simply based upon the quantity of sales (which is fine, if you think that's an acceptable demarcation line, but it will still lead to lots of cases where large companies are legally treated differently, which, in and of itself does happen, but any new text added to a given law will simply pad the lining of lawyers pockets whose job it is to argue over the minutae of each word).

But if I pepper a market crowd with my family members all randomly talking about how amazing the food/widgets/whatever over at Bob's Widget Stand are, so that over hearing bystanders can hear is a form a psychological manipulation that may fall into a gray area.

Ultimately, each time you say "this is fine, this isn't", you're adding an exception and branching logic that will be argued about ad infinitum.

Laws, like lines of code, have a technical debt to them, except the lines of law are likely to impact more people generally, enough so to ruin lives and industries (which can happen with code, of course, but code doesn't have the same global application to every member of society backed up with the use of force).

I'm not saying that reaching an acceptable compromise is unachievable, but conceptually, it's a lot more involved than simply laying out the broad strokes, with tons of ramifications, implicit and otherwise, that have to be considered.

[Red_Leaves_Flyy]

Large companies should have a harder time advertising than smaller ones. The truly great companies will spread by word of mouth alone. Unscrupulous and destructive companies will find it much harder to get a footing when they can't manipulate people into buying their trash.

In re to your example. If you were to pay your family members (in any way) that would be wrong in my book. If your family does this out of the goodness of their hearts then so be it. It's their unpaid labor. I fully realize that no solution will stop every avenue of abuse. However, seeding crowds with people up selling your widgets only works for so long. you'll never be able to reach scale with those methods because eventually the irs will audit you or your family members and even though you wouldn't go down for illegal advertising you would go down for not paying taxes. Or you'd find that having enough family family members to seed every crowd is getting you unwanted attention, or is just too darn expensive.

By banning all advertisements except advertising in person, at the location of sale and for only items sold at that location there would be very little room for manipulation. Obviously the time share/used car methods would still work, but I haven't ever seen a way to make that profitable with low margin items, where many consumers get fleeced by huge ad budgets.

Basically, I think everything but shouting about your products from your shop should be illegal. I can see concessions made for websites that don't sell anything, and charge transparent/flat fees for listing their info in a web directory that is intentionally bland. However, writing legislation for that would be a whole lot harder to draft than what I've already stated.

I realize my desires are unrealistic. That being said, advertisings days of doing whatever creepy crap they want to without punishment are numbered. Either the industry will reform itself (unlikely, it's too easy to delude oneself when pulling $500k for selling fidget spinners) or, eventually, some people are going to be nailed to the walls of Congress as examples.

[natecavanaugh]

Okay, I can see your point about wanting to curb the abuses, but how do you accomplish that without removing the positives?

For instance, I find that the advertising done by Facebook and Instagram very effective for me. The advertising tends to cater to niche things I have actually gotten real use from (in my case, it's soundkits containing midi files, and/or software musical instruments).

I've purchased many of these and have been quite happy with both the offerings and the purchases.

Sometimes these are by small companies (one to two man shops, or 10 people companies), and sometimes well known large companies.

Under your thinking, and correct me if I'm wrong, but this sort of thing would be illegal.

Word of mouth wouldn't work for me in cases like this, since it's particularly directed towards things I like, but I don't have very many friends in the music producer community (learning it for less than a year), and it seems in my case, I've really only been "scammed" once, which was easily disputed and rectified via PayPal.

Now, I've been scammed before, online and off, with shady advertising, but this current model greatly benefits me.

If I'm correct in assuming that you're against this sort of advertising, is there a substitute that would work, while still bringing the benefits to both sides?

Because it appears to me that anything will have it's abuses and negative forms, but it really comes down to, is the advertising to blame, or the malignant folks who abuse it?