LD 509
pg. 31
Page 30 of 183 An Act To Adopt the Maine Uniform Securities Act Page 32 of 183
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LR 441
Item 1

 
After the 1956 Act was published, the United States Supreme Court
construed the definition of investment adviser in Lowe v. SEC, 472
U.S. 181 (1985), and concluded:

 
Congress did not intend to exclude publications that are
distributed by investment advisers as a normal part of the
business of servicing their clients. The legislative history
plainly demonstrates that Congress was primarily interested
in regulating the business of rendering personalized
investment advice, including publishing activities that are
a normal incident thereto. On the other hand, Congress,
plainly sensitive to First Amendment concerns, wanted to
make clear that it did not seek to regulate the press
through the licensing of nonpersonalized publishing
activities.

 
Id. at 185.

 
Responsive to this language RUSA rewrote this exclusion to
provide:

 
a publisher, employee, or columnist of a newspaper, news
magazine, or business or financial publication, or an owner,
operator, or employee of a cable, radio, or television
network, station, or production facility, if, in either
case, the financial or business news published or
disseminated is made available to the general public and the
content does not consist of rendering advice on the basis of
the specific investment situation of each client.

 
Recent experience at the federal and state levels suggest that
the 1956 Act and RUSA approaches may be too broad. The retention
of the Investment Advisers Act approach provides a better balance
between First Amendment concerns and protection of investors from
non-"bona fide" publicizing of investment advice. The exclusion
in Section 102(15)(D) is intended to exclude publishers of
Internet or electronic media, but only if the Internet or
electronic media publication or website satisfies the "bona fide"
and "publication of general and regular circulation"
requirements. Cf. SEC v. Park, 99 F. Supp. 2d 889, 895-896 (N.D.
Ill. 2000) (court declined to dismiss complaint against an
Internet website when there were allegations that the website was
not "bona fide" or of "general and regular circulation").

 
The exclusion in Section 102(15)(G) is required by the
National Securities Markets Improvement Act of 1996. This
exclusion will reach banks and bank holding companies as
described in Investment Advisers Act Section 202(a)(11)(A) and


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