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As long as there's fibre somewhere along the line, High Court judge reckons it's fine to flog it as 'fibre' broadband

Alan Brown Silver badge

"Judges in the UK are famously impartial."

The Judge even acknowledged the issue - the problem is that the ASA "has a procedure" and then followed it meticulously.

What this decision underscores is that the ASA IS NOT A FUCKING REGULATOR - and as such it is not bound by the kinds of rules that a regulator would be - they tend to make it up as they go along.

At heart is that the challenge wasn't about truth in advertising, it was about the technicalities of the way the ASA came to its decision about truth in advertising - and bear in mind that the ASA is a boys' club, not a regulator - it exists specifically in order to stave off having government intervention, so its rules are written to ensure that everything favours itself and its internal decisions.

A judicial review against following procedures and rules will fail - even if the procedure happens to be completely WRONG - the challenge would need to be against the rules or the procedures themselves.

The court system IS NOT and never has been about "justice", it's about "law"(*) - and as long as the ASA kept within the confines of their rules then they couldn't lose this case.

Of course a few legal rulings upholding obviously boneheaded ASA decisions might well result in it being replaced with a real regulator with proper regulatory oversight, but in the meantime, it acts as a highly effective way of "the industry" running interference between advertisers and Trading Standards.

In the meantime: The Register and others need to stop referring to the ASA as a "regulator" and give it its _real_ designation of "industry-self-appointed internal watch poodle"

(*) Remember all the things which have been "legal" in the past - Apartheid, Concentration camps, interment, Jim Crow laws, Enclosure laws, etc.

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