This seems unworkable. Gaining attention is intrinsically commercial activity. Attention has value; you can't stop it bleeding into the rest of the world. Some examples and questions:
- An "influencer" gets her photo on a Wheaties box. After that, the influencer doesn't have to do overt advertising to promote the cereal, their fortunes are bound together.
- In politics, as the former US president so amply demonstrated, attention is a currency.
- What about the exchange of ideas? Can one talk about the contents of a book without selling (or discouraging the sales of) the book?
- Is any mention of brand names to be prohibited? If you can mention a brand, unless all the brand's marketing has been completely ineffective, you are selling the brand. Don't like it? Pass the Kleenex.
It won't be a problem for local republican politicians as long as people keep moving to already democratic locations like Austin, whose impact has already been gerrymandered away.
If we're going to get "definitional," Snowden is not a traitor. "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." Setting aside for the moment the definition of "Enemies" - a notion that is usually reserved for wartime - it is difficult to see how Snowden's revelations gave comfort to anyone, and aid only in the sense of "Oh, and by the way, we're reading your emails and listening to your phone calls," which any sane "enemy" already suspected. Witness the precautions the Osama bin Laden camp took to never let any electronic communication originate from their hiding place in Pakistan.
Snowden violated his contract with the NSA and broke the law, but neither of these amounts to treason.
- An "influencer" gets her photo on a Wheaties box. After that, the influencer doesn't have to do overt advertising to promote the cereal, their fortunes are bound together.
- In politics, as the former US president so amply demonstrated, attention is a currency.
- What about the exchange of ideas? Can one talk about the contents of a book without selling (or discouraging the sales of) the book?
- Is any mention of brand names to be prohibited? If you can mention a brand, unless all the brand's marketing has been completely ineffective, you are selling the brand. Don't like it? Pass the Kleenex.