No one ever claimed that there was 17" of viewable area. The tube itself is 17" in diagonal dimension, which is how tube manufacturers describe them, and that nomenclature is just carried through the monitor manufacturers. Just because the consumer hasn't bothered to investigate what is common knowledge among anyone with any passing familiarity with the industry isn't reason enough to claim fraud.

Someone did. Back before the lawsuit, many monitor makers never specified what the viewable size was. So someone started a lawsuit, the industry got a slap on the wrist, and consumers got an extra spec number on the monitor data sheets.

Now if only LCD makers would realise they need to put all the specs out there. It's a pain in the ass to find many LCD's pixel response time figures, and that number is the second most important number to me, beyond the size of the screen.