If it keeps one baby from learning to read, it’s worth it.
My grandson learned to read by the time he was 15 months old, using Your Baby Can Read. When he was two, he could read every word in his vocabulary and some that were not even in his vocabulary, like “Chimpanzee”.
I took him to a little zoo when he was 15 months old and pointed to the pig barn, which was labeled, “Pigs” and he told me what it said. I also tested him with flash cards and he was actually able to read them.
The idea and logic of “your baby CAN read” (not ‘will’, definitely, just ‘can’) is built on a few already achieved understandings about human language skills.
Humans - infants and children - have language skills earlier than do they have the skill to speak - which involves certain physical changes and mastery of the voice, not just ‘mental’ ability.
Humans are able to learn and recognize the meaning of sounds communicated to them - “NO!!!!” - much sooner than they can speak. Mastery of understanding what is meant by a spoken word demonstrates that the skill to recognize an idea through symbols is already there (symbolism - a sound we make in speech is but a sound-symbol for an idea).
Humans can identify symbols that they are taught are attached to either words (sounds) or ideas, earlier than they can speak. It has been shown that “baby’s” ARE able to learn a small dictionary of symbols from “American Sign Language” earlier than they they will speak. (in the last five years, babies among my relatives have done so).
So, both symbols and sounds can be learned and applied (by the human brain) for communication in a time frame that is possible to achieve before the ability to speak takes hold.
It is certainly “possible”, with training (when the spelling of the word “cat” is always shown along with the image of a cat and the sound of the word cat), and “reading ability” (recognizing the word symbols identified with an image) to begin (rudimentary) even before normal speech does.
Regardless, the obviously well funded advocacy group that filed the complaint with the FTC had deep enough pockets to damage the finances of the company. Too bad.