Quote Originally Posted by Rockwell
The point I was trying to make with my (however flawed ) analogy was that selling something that really does nothing(as claimed) is wrong. It doesn't matter if no one gets hurt or whether or not the the company ever gets punished. I was trying to project a similar situation on to another industry where people don't have such an apathetic attitude towards fraud.

As for the question how would a judge would decide: Take a look at the "Benefits" on this web page: http://www.psaudio.com/products/xstream_power.asp
It seems to me that two or three are specific enough that they could be verified. ..and the customer quotes are over the top, but there probably isn't anything that can be done about those.

You are asking why anyone would care about this industry. I think that most of the "objectivists" on this board are engineers or scientists of some sort, and everything about cable sonics/technology and assosociated tweak industry insults their profession and intelligence. You have a whole industry based on a whole lot of nothing being sold at astronomical prices disingenuously using psuedo-science. Not everyone is has money to burn, and when Joe Consumer goes into Circuit City, he shouldn't be conned into spending hundreds of dollars on Monster cable for his HT system. Joe is not a scientist or an engineer, and there really is no place to get objective information about whether these cables are providing anything worthwhile.
I see your point but I think the accusation of "fraud" is going to be difficult to prove when you have an entire sub-niche group of users who will swear up and down that their system did indeed improve through the use of these exotic cables.

Your third paragraph in particular makes a whole lot of sense from more than a few aspects. You're correct; Joe Consumer has no means to fight back. He's not an audiophile with a lot of experience in determining for himself that cables are either a fraud or a godsend. You're also correct that he's probably being fed pseudo-science in order to forcefeed his decision and he's not equipped to refute it. So, as it worked with me, at least the first set of cables is purchased and the cycle begins, at which point it's up the consumer to learn for himself if cables are worth fussing over. As a result, I would think that the cable companies and retailers should indeed refrain from using advertising that claims anything of a scientific nature and instead uses nothing other than personal anecdotes such as "thousands of happy users feel these cables are the best" or something along those lines. They should be able to garner enough of those.

Thanks for clearing up my confusion, Rockwell!