Now all of the "brought to you by America's <industry group>" ads are back in. So is every pharma ad and every other patented product because they don't have to tell you a brand when there is only one producer.
> The insulation example can be solved by publication of data on average heating costs.
Publication where? In the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard"? Also, who decides to publish it, decides what it will say or pays the costs of writing and distributing it?
No, but they can convince a disinterested party that people aren't aware of <fact about industry that industry wants people to know> because that's actually true.
> Minimum competition requirements can be imposed.
But that brings back the original problem. Company invents new patented invention, how does anybody find out about it?
> a solution being imperfect is not a good reason to leave the problem unaddressed.
This is the legislator's fallacy. Something must be done, this is something, therefore we must do this.
If a proposal is full of problems and holes, the alternative isn't necessarily to do nothing, but rather to find a different approach to the problem.
Proposals that are full of holes are often worse than nothing, because the costs are evaluated in comparison to the ostensible benefit, but then in practice you get only a fraction of the benefit because of the holes. And then people say "well a little is better than nothing" while not accounting for the fact that weighing all of the costs against only a fraction of the benefit has left you underwater.
But I acknowledge that there may be edge cases. My point is that the existence of edge cases does not mean we should permit the harm to continue. Those specific edge cases can be identified and patched. My suggestion is a hypothetical example of a potential such patch, one that might possibly be a net benefit. Maybe it would actually be a net harm, and the restriction should be absolute. The specifics don't matter, it's merely an example to illustrate how edge cases might be patched.
Your objections to this hypothetical example are nit-picking the edge cases of an edge case. They're so insignificant in comparison to the potential harm reduction of preventing advertising that they can be safely ignored.