Legal

1
Legal Ethical Issues

• Longstanding concern about unfair and deceptive
  practices and lack of financial literacy
• deceptive advertising
• unfair advertising
• poor loan and investment choices
• consumer fraud
• Self regulation working well in advertising, but
  not working well in many situations
• direct marketers do not call lists
• movie, game, and CD content
• Lanham Act suits common
• Class action suits problematical

2
Deception and Unfairness

• Government dealing with the more complicated
  deception/unfairness matters
• implied claims (e.g., Kraft cheese food)
• Focus on creation of false beliefs
• unfairness to certain audiences
• concern about materiality and substantiality
• credence goods or where health affected (e.g.,
  prescription drugs) FDA and Viagra
• certain practices banned, cooling off laws,
  warranty laws
• Government treading carefully because of First
  Amendment and lobbyist influence
• information remedies of all types

3
Other Issues

• Manipulating wants inappropriately (e.g.,
  tobacco, alcohol, junk food, credit cards,
  contests)
• Contaminating values (e.g., materialism)
• Being wasteful (e.g., ad wars, junk mail)
• Playing favorites (e.g., targeting vulnerable,
  ignoring needy, slotting fees)
• Being intrusive (e.g., capturing private data,
  telemarketing)