Stateline.org has a story on the controversy over digital billboards--those signs with commercial messages that rotate from one advertiser to another. So far it's a tempest in a teapot, with only 700 out of 450,000 billboards nationally in electronic/digital form.

Says the article, "So far, they are legal in 38 states and more states are grappling with whether to embrace them after a recent FHWA memo said the signs were not violating the law along interstate and federally financed roadways."

There are at least two issues surrounding these commercial advertisements. One is whether they violate federal laws governing federal highways. Though that's a legal question, the underlying issue seems to be aesthetics: "I don't like looking at those things, therefore they shouldn't exist." That's not exactly a convincing argument.

The other issue is whether these billboards are so hazardous to driving (the distraction theory) that they should be banned. Face it, distractions have been with drivers since at least the first radio, if not earlier.

Color me unconvinced on the subject, or perhaps the two-handed economist. On the one hand, roads are largely government property, and government can within certain limits (think of Miranda rights at traffic stops, to start with) do what it wants. Government can also apply restrictions on the exercise of free speech (think of the permitting process for parades) on government property, as long as it does so in a content-neutral fashion.

Of course, commercial speech has always enjoyed less legal protection than non-commercial speech. That's not a good thing. The anti-commerce bias that I detect in the "let's ban these billboards" movement is enough to make be vaguely skeptical of any plans to ban them.

What do you think? Comment below. I suppose you could argue that we can eliminate the problem by privatizing all roads. Fair enough, though (1) laws (e.g., traffic laws) still apply on toll roads, and (2), a call for private roads so that we can let a thousand points of billboard light bloom strikes me as a libertopian vision that has rather limited public appeal.