Comments on: beer, Santa, and commercial speech

By: Heidi Kitrosser

Heidi Kitrosser — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 15:29:42 +0000

Ann, now I know what to do for my holiday shopping!

By: Ann Bartow

Ann Bartow — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 04:54:14 +0000

Collect the whole set!

http://www.new-beer.com/images/englandwinter.gif

By: Scott Carpenter

Scott Carpenter — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 01:26:55 +0000

I'd like to have some level of taste and decorum to balance out cruder expressions, but as always, who is to judge for us? The Santa's Butt label is humorous and harmless, to me.

On a semi-related note and along the lines of John's comment, have you heard about the truly free as in free speech beer? Lawrence Lessig wrote about it for Wired: "Free, as in Beer"

By: Heidi Kitrosser

Heidi Kitrosser — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 05:44:31 +0000

It is interesting, by the way, that the R.A.V. doctrine has not clearly altered step 3 (which effectively serves as the content regulation analysis step) of the Central Hudson test. And the Court’s had an opportunity to take that step since R.A.V., but they haven’t done it. Perhaps, ironically, the fact that commercial speech generally gets much more protection than “unprotected” speech like obscenity, incitement, etc., has made the Court feel that it’s unnecessary to leap to the extreme of strict scrutiny for regulations of content within the commercial speech category. Or perhaps there’s an unspoken sense that content within categories like incitements, threats, etc. are more likely to be of “high value” (say, political).

By: Howard Wasserman

Howard Wasserman — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 05:22:30 +0000

I think your conclusion basically is right. “Commercial speech” (i.e., advertising and product publicity) today (and probably historically) contains some of the best artistic, political, and social expression, commentary, and parody/satire (such as in the beer label). That parody exists separate from the “proposal of a commercial (or market) transaction.” And it cannot lose its full protection simply because it appears on a product label, rather than in, say, a protest against government-sponsored Christmas displays.

By: John Armstrong

John Armstrong — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 02:02:46 +0000

This is going to throw off the whole slogan for the FSF...