False Advertising And The Federal Trade Commission Act

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False Advertising Introduction: Advertising techniques can be traced back for centuries, and as new mediums become available, advertisements become more abundant. Radios, televisions, the internet, and social media have opened new doors to marketing agencies, looking for more customers for their respective companies. As a result of those more frequent advertisements, companies are forced to become more creative in their ways of getting new buyers. Some of those new “creative” ideas have been all but truthful. False advertisements have made their way around the world in several different cases. Companies have used misleading slogans, deceptive qualities, and others have even switched the product they were originally selling for a less attractive one. Agencies have been created and laws have been passed to discourage this behavior. In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission was created in order to protecting consumers, with specific regulations regarding all types of advertising. While, the European Union recently passed the Directive on Misleading and Comparative Advertising in order to, “protect …show more content…

For some specialized products or services, additional rules may apply.” There are several laws regarding advertising in general, but there is limited legislation specific to online advertising specifically. The Federal Trade Commission Act permits the FTC to investigate unfair or deceptive advertising in any medium. The FTC Act, 15 U.S. Code § 53 titled “False advertisements; injunctions and restraining orders” and § 52 titled “Dissemination of false advertisements” indicates that “it shall be unlawful for any person, partnership, or corporation to disseminate, or cause to be disseminated, any false advertisement”. This piece of legislation has protects consumers from deceptive