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Billboards

Billboards are a long-established medium for communication and conveying messages but are subject to regulation like other structures. Regulations are motivated by ensuring public safety and minimizing negative visual impacts in a community. However, the recent controversy involves regulating billboard contents, as some contents may constitute a nuisance by injuring health/safety, offending senses, or shocking decency. Commercial speech, while a form of constitutionally protected free speech, may be regulated more than political or religious speech as not all commercial speech involves public interest. US jurisprudence on this issue will be relevant to interpreting similar Philippine laws.

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47 views

Billboards

Billboards are a long-established medium for communication and conveying messages but are subject to regulation like other structures. Regulations are motivated by ensuring public safety and minimizing negative visual impacts in a community. However, the recent controversy involves regulating billboard contents, as some contents may constitute a nuisance by injuring health/safety, offending senses, or shocking decency. Commercial speech, while a form of constitutionally protected free speech, may be regulated more than political or religious speech as not all commercial speech involves public interest. US jurisprudence on this issue will be relevant to interpreting similar Philippine laws.

Uploaded by

Strawberry_Hotdog
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Billboards are a long established medium of communication, used to convey a broad range of different kinds of messages.

But whatever its communicative function, the billboard remains a large, immobile, and permanent structure which like other structures is subject to regulation. Justice John Paul Stevens Metromedia, Inc. v. San Diego, 453 U.S. 490 (1981) From the point of view of local government, the regulation of signs is motivated by the need to ensure public safety and minimize the negative visual impacts of signs in a community. The means by which these goals have traditionally been accomplished have been to limit the size of signs, control their type, placement, and appearance, and, generally, to impose measures to reduce "visual clutter." However in the recent controversy what triggered the campaign is the issue of decency of the contents of the billboards, some of which might be considered nuisance. The Civil Code defines nuisance, in Article 694, Title VIII, Book II, as any act, omission, establishment, condition of property, or anything else which: a. b. c. d. Injures or endangers the health or safety of others; or Annoys or offends the senses; or Shocks, defies or disregards decency or morality; or Obstructs or interferes with the free passage of any or public highway or street, or any body of water; or e. Hinders or impairs the use of property. Article 695 of the Civil Code provides that a public nuisance affects a community or neighborhood or any considerable number of persons, although the extent of the annoyance, danger or damage upon individuals may be unequal. Thus it would seem that it is only right to regulate not only the physical dimensions of the billboard but also its contents. However, billboards are also considered a form of speech and its regulation would mean regulation of a constitutionally guaranteed right. Therefore it is necessary to distinguish the distinctions between the kinds of speech contained in the advertisement, religious; political; or commercial etc. The constitution affords political speech and religious speech the highest protection. The current issue however is about commercial speech. Does it also enjoy the protection of the constitution? Our Jurisprudence recognizes that there may also be public interest involved in commercial speeches although not in all of them and so its level of protection cannot be the same as that of the other two mentioned. Our jurisprudence has in some cases referred to U.S. jurisprudence in the interpretation of laws that are patterned on their laws. In the next document is a paper citing cases on the regulation of free speech.

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