Attorney Sues Website Over His Online Rating

An anonymous reader writes "The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is reporting that a local attorney is suing legal startup Avvo over a rating that was algorithmically assigned. The story covers the controversy of computers grading humans. 'Browne, who has participated in a number of high-profile cases in the state, including the defense of arsonist Martin Pang, said in an interview that Avvo is being irresponsible with the ratings and called them a fraud. And he questioned why Supreme Court justices and prominent lawyers score so low. Three other attorneys interviewed by the P-I also expressed doubts about the rating system, while News.com reported that the site "seemed to be riddled with bizarre errors."' Such practices are not new: the New York Times earlier this year reported on Google using algorithms to determine applicant suitability. But what happens when you don't like the result? Can a computer program be considered defamatory?"

Comments

Just another tool.

[Harmonious Botch]

From TFA:

Can a computer program be considered defamatory?" Programs can not be defamatory. Their output may be.

If I use a hand-held calculator to get a result, and then publish it and that publication defames someone, I can't blame it on the calculator.
In this case, a computer is just another tool used to calculate something - perhaps a tool that many people don't understand as well as they should - but a tool nonetheless.
You use it, you take responsibility for the results. You don't understand how it works? Hire a consultant. The fact that it is a complex tool does not excuse you if you libel someone.

( NB: The above paragraphs presume that there is indeed libel, a fact not yet proven.)

Re:Just another tool.

[pimpimpim]

As far as I understood it, a person is rated by a website with some rating procedure the website worked out. So your example doesn't really hold. Someone else used a method on the calculator to calculate the result, and he complains about the method.

I don't know what to think of this. As a restaurant, you can earn michelin stars based on the grades you get from probably several testers. Did you ever hear of a restaurant that sued michelin for loosing a star? It doesn't seem to make sense.

Rmember, any person, magazine, or website can grade services, but they will only be taken seriously when they have a decent method. Systems like this work when not only the public has faith in the method, but also the people involved (e.g. the chefs), respect the way the testing was done. If restaurants would think that the michelin system is fake, they wouldn't be proud of their stars in the first place.

Since there seems to be quite a group of people that do not agree with the method used by that website, they can of course try to sue them, but I figure that the website will be rendered useless within the trade fast enough that they might as well just ignore the score of the website all together. Sueing might even be counterproductive, I didn't know before that the website existed in the first place. And I think he has very much the right to do so. He never asked to be rated, but at the same time the rating will be of high economic importance to him (getting more high-profile jobs, etc.). Now you could compare this with a restaurant getting the famous michelin stars, it can make or brake the restaurant. Now In cases like that, you need to be able to ask for a second opinion.

Re:Just another tool.

[Dunbal]

When members of a profession start referring to non-members as 'laymen', it is time to start shooting them.

      I think layman is a lot better than vulgar, don't you, you vulgar person?

Re:Just another tool.

[buswolley]

Programs can't be defamatory? Well their code can be?

Have you read some of the comments people put in source code?

Re:Just another tool.

[Harmonious Botch]

As far as I understood it, a person is rated by a website with some rating procedure the website worked out. All by itself? Just a website doing things on its own?
Some human made a decision somewhere.

Re:Just another tool.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you just uncovered the reason corporations don't dig open-source.

Re:Just another tool.

[Sancho]

I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 100. Can you guess what it is? Give up? It's my Pagerank score, and mine happens to be 86.

That's what this situation reminds me of. Credit scores (which is what the above lines reference) are calculated by an algorithm, and they can be wrong. If they are, you can get the company to adjust them, provided that you can provide evidence that their input is faulty. I see no reason that this case should be any different, provided the inputs (reasons for the ranking) are well known.

In the case of Google, however, they are providing a ranking rather than a rating. It is much, much harder to objectively rank webpage relevance based on search terms, and even harder to know whether a given ranking is justified when you don't even know the algorithm used.

Re:Just another tool.

[QuietLagoon]

Programs can not be defamatory. Their output may be.

I disagree. Programs are merely an extension of the human(s) who designed them, the program does what the human(s) told them to do. Therefore what a program does is the full responsibility of the human who designed it.

I always laugh when a programmer tells me, "there's a bug in my program." My first questions is always, "well, who put that bug there?" Programmers talk of bugs as if they just magically appear, and are not the result of the programmer's error(s).

The comment that programs cannot be defamatory smacks as specious at best. Of course, programs can be defamatory. Programs are written by humans, programs are computerized extensions of humans.

Re:Just another tool.

[Snaller]

"You use it, you take responsibility for the results. You don't understand how it works? Hire a consultant. The fact that it is a complex tool does not excuse you if you libel someone."

Ranking someone based on your critera is not libel.

Re:Just another tool.

[2.7182]

My Lisp code says you are a troll! (Just kidding....)

Re:Just another tool.

[SnowZero]

Agreed. You can encode whatever you want into an algorithm, and it can certainly be biased and even illegal. For example, in some applicant rating system for a hiring "screen" program, if you have:

if(applicant.sex == female) rating = 0.0;

That would certainly violate equal opportunity laws, unless the company could prove that the output of said program was not used at all.

Re:Just another tool.

[Torvaun]

"Programs can not be defamatory. Their output may be."

Oh yeah?

int main()
{
   int x = 2; //Anonymous Coward is an incredible tool.
   return 0;  //The number of balls Anonymous Coward has.
}

Re:Just another tool.

[Torvaun]

I hate those commercials. In my head, I think "He's thinking of a number between 20 and 80. Do you know what it is? It's his goddamned IQ!"

Re:Just another tool.

[Firethorn]

The fact that it is a complex tool does not excuse you if you libel someone.

But is it libel? I see very little difference between this and consumer reports - Both take data and attempt to draw a simple rating/conclusion from it. If the lawer wins his case it undermines the whole independent review and ratings system - because anybody giving a negative rating would be open to a lawsuit.

How they weigh their ratings is up to them, just as it's my choice as to how heavily I weigh their ratings (anywhere from not bothering to read them to simply attempting to get the highest rated).

Errors in the data is one thing - for it to be true libel it would probably have to be deliberate. As they get more data into the system, improve accuracy, etc... The ratings should become more accurate.

Re:Just another tool.

[tubapro12]

What if I write a program that's only purpose is to defame someone...it would be defamatory.

Re:Just another tool.

[timeOday]

Credit scores (which is what the above lines reference) are calculated by an algorithm, and they can be wrong. If they are, you can get the company to adjust them, provided that you can provide evidence that their input is faulty.

If, on the other hand, the credit rating company has all its facts right, but you don't like their algorithm and think you're still credit-worthy even though they don't? Well you're screwed. How to combine numbers is their prerogative. Think about how that applies to this case.

Re:Just another tool.

[cyberknutt]

He could ask to be excluded from the rating system but, of course, unrated sites would be listed below rated sites.

Re:Just another tool.

[Joebert]

Can a computer program be considered defamatory?"

No, but the criteria the computer program uses to determine the rankings can be.

Re:Just another tool.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now you've got me wondering, if http://127.0.0.1/ was given a PageRank score, what would it be?

Re:Just another tool.

[donaggie03]

I'm pretty sure "the truth" is a proper defense against libel. You can say all kinds of terrible things about a person, and as long as all of those things are true, then it is not libel. So if all your figures are correct, you plug and chug those figures through some kind of equation or algorithm, and you get a really bad score, then it is not libel. Furthermore, someone's opinion is not libel either. If the equation involves a groups opinion on a person, then that isn't libel. This guy has no case unless he can prove that the facts used to generate his rating were false. Regardless of the tool or methods used, it comes down to the simple question of whether the facts were true or false.

Re:Just another tool.

[Mistlefoot]

And if my algorithm says that if your first and last name start with P you must be a PedoPhile can I call you one and hide behind math?

I think not.

Re:Just another tool.

[neoform]

Does that mean I can sue the mirror company for making me look so fat and ugly?

Re:Just another tool.

[Fordiman]

That said, if it's pissing lawyers off, then I'm using it to select my lawyer, if I ever have need of one.

Re:Just another tool.

[Fordiman]

Well, law is a kind of special case here:

Lawyers, as a general rule, will object mightily to being rated, even if it's 100% accurate.

They don't want people to know how good or bad they are; it's disruptive to their practice.

Re:Just another tool.

[Fordiman]

Sure you can. And every person named Peter can call you a fake, and every person who sees your method can tell the world that you're a fake.

The problem here isn't the math, or the low ratings. The problem is idiots like you who don't understand that an industry rating depends on the faith of the people and the respect of the industry.

If the site gets no faith or respect, the site will fail.

Re:Just another tool.

[Fordiman]

You should read some of the ones I write while fixing other people's source. I'm particularly mean. /* Another goddamn unrolled loop without abstraction. Not to self: Find Gonzo and shoot him in the face. The man's an insult to software design */

Re:Just another tool.

[Fordiman]

"I always laugh when a programmer tells me, 'there's a bug in my program.' My first questions is always, 'well, who put that bug there?' Programmers talk of bugs as if they just magically appear, and are not the result of the programmer's error(s)."

Wow. That's probably the most erroneous thing anybody's ever said about coding.

Between undocumented API 'features', poorly documented bugs, faulty frameworks, and others in the development pipeline of varying skill, you'd think it's enough to track down a bug, let alone assign blame.

Re:Just another tool.

[Mistlefoot]

The article asks

"Can a computer program be considered defamatory?"

The Grandparent says

"As far as I understood it, a person is rated by a website with some rating procedure the website worked out."

The parent replies with

"All by itself? Just a website doing things on its own?
Some human made a decision somewhere."

and I agree. I've not commented on any industry ratings. Neither have any of the posts before me. I am merely implying that you cannot hide behind a computer program or algorithm. Of course a computer program can be considered defamatory - but the person who wrote the program (or was responsible for it's output) would be complicite.

When you call me an idiot because I "don't understand that an industry rating depends on the faith of the people and the respect of the industry" at least wait until I offer an opinion on industry ratings before I do so.

Re:Just another tool.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Can a computer program be considered defamatory?"

Of course not. Humans can do defamatory things. But, as all /.ers know, computers are magic boxen which do wonderful things totally on their own, and have no input from, or nothing to do with humans at all.

If an industry group published a ranking system they had manually worked out, they should be responsible for it. But if they send programmers and operators dressed in white coats to perform arcane rituals in front of the mainframe so that a ranking program will magically appear in it's backing store, well, then, of course normal human law does not apply!

Re:Just another tool.

[inKubus]

You've never been a developer have you? When I read this article, I immediately thought: "Great, something else they can blame IT for."

Re:Just another tool.

[owlstead]

I don't know if you are trying to be funny, but three of such lines would get you fired from my company. And that is how it is supposed to be. If you really write such comments, you need to grow up. You first try and better a person and if he/she does not cooperate, you fire that person (that's why it is three warnings, really, otherwise you would have been fired right away).

Re:Just another tool.

[plusser]

Something very similar has happened in the UK recently. May I refer you all to the following webpage http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6677985.stm. Computer based tools are like any other tool, unfortunately if they are poorly though out they can cause harm. What I think that will happen in the case described in this thread is that somebody will pick a really bad lawyer through the website and then loose their case as a result. As a result in the publicity, the site will end up discredited and people will stop using it.

The moral of the story is don't expect one tool to have all the correct answers. The problem is that many people in the world are not bright enough to understand this.

Re:Just another tool.

[j.leidner]

New York Times earlier this year reported on Google using algorithms to determine applicant suitability.

float fApplicantScore = bSlashdotReader ? ( iSlashdotPosts[1999] * iIQ + fSvnCommitsPerDay ) : 0.0;

Re:Just another tool.

[mr_matticus]

That depends wholly on what the criteria are.

Re:Just another tool.

[Snaller]

"That depends wholly on what the criteria are."

No, not at all. Libel is if you publish something as fact which is infact a lie - so it depends on what they claimed.

Re:Just another tool.

[mr_matticus]

And where is it written that a criteria used for input is true? If the criterion in question is itself libelous, then there is a problem.

You assume that the inputs are all incontrovertible facts. That is not known.

I'll say it again. Whether or not the program is libellous depends wholly on what the criteria are.

Re:Just another tool.

[Rob Kaper]

Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of the algorithm being defamatory (or technically, biased) and not the comments.

bool qualifiedForJob( &person )
if ( person.religion == "muslim" || person.race == "negroid" )
    return false;
else
    return true;

Obviously such a straightforwarded bias would be easy to spot, but fact remains is that if you don't know the algorithm, you won't know why you were dismissed. Not that it's much different from dealing with real persons though, sure they say "we found a candidate with better credentials" but how sure can you be they didn't really mean "who's not a stoner/kite/woman/whatever" ?

Re:Just another tool.

[GuyverDH]

That's an if then statement, not an algorithm... rating=(((sex="male") * 3) * (numwins / numgames)) There - that's an algorithm... if sex=female, score = 0

Re:Just another tool.

[Snaller]

"You assume that the inputs are all incontrovertible facts. That is not known."

No. Read what I write. It depends on what the site claims about the output, the input is not relevant.

Re:Just another tool.

[Fordiman]

I don't work for a company. I'm a freelancer. And myself and my ilk are the only ones that end up seeing the code.

Mind you, those comments don't stay in the final product, just in my copies; it's all web stuff, so we strip out comments and syntactically compress everything before it goes live.

Meanwhile, I do vent to my clients once in a while. This particular one was a valid complaint; the older code I was working on had a 15-part loop unrolled with full inline javascript/CSS declarations, and the same PHP code repeated in each iteration. Like the bastard did it on purpose. It took me two HOURS to clean that mess up into a single loop, and to fit everything into reusable functions and CSS declarations. Went from 150k of redundant code to about 9k.

And I don't even *know* Gonzo. He was the guy my client used for devel before G decided to go out and start a business doing this (to people). Last I heard, he was attempting to charge someone $20,000 for a relatively simple CMS.

Re:Just another tool.

[mr_matticus]

I'm not sure how it is you're not getting this. The input absolutely is relevant. If the criteria used for rating are flawed or subjective, then the output is of no value.

If there's a selection criteria giving precedent to lawyers from wealthier parts of cities, for example, that's a flawed input. If there's a system designed to penalize lawyers from certain geographic or ethnic backgrounds, that's a flawed criterion. If the gender of the attorney results in a different score between two otherwise identical subjects, you've got an invalid data point. The output is simply a totaled numerical score derived from the values of the inputs--it's the criteria that determine whether the entire ranking process is appropriate.

Re:Just another tool.

[Snaller]

"I'm not sure how it is you're not getting this."

Heh, and I'm not sure how you aren't able to get this - perhaps I'm logical and you are a laywer?

" The input absolutely is relevant. If the criteria used for rating are flawed or subjective, then the output is of no value."

The output is still not relevant. It doesn't matter if you thin it has value or not, what matters is how they present it.

"This proves who are competent" could be a dangerous statement, whereas "According to our subjective criteria this person comes out on top" is probably fine.

"If there's a selection criteria giving precedent to lawyers from wealthier parts of cities, for example, that's a flawed input."

No, that's subjective input. Just like the Oscar for best movie is not for all movies made that year, but only a group of movies made. Doesn't mean its valueless, just means you need to know the conditions.

"If there's a system designed to penalize lawyers from certain geographic or ethnic backgrounds, that's a flawed criterion."

Subjectively chosen input.

"If the gender of the attorney results in a different score between two otherwise identical subjects, you've got an invalid data point. "

Subjectively chosen input.

"The output is simply a totaled numerical score derived from the values of the inputs--it's the criteria that determine whether the entire ranking process is appropriate."

From your point of view, others may find it perfectly fine.

Re:Just another tool.

[mr_matticus]

"Subjectively chosen inputs" are the crux of the legal complaint. The output is a number; it is meaningless without knowing how it was derived (just as the claim "I'm the third best plumber in the state" is only relevant as a question of fact insofar as what evidence supports that conclusion). If the criteria selected are deemed appropriate for the field (i.e. they are justified with factual support or disclosed), then the output number that is assembled produces a permissable and legal rank. Any given ranking system is subjective to some extent; that is not important.

You claim to be logical, but don't actually use any logic. The output is a number. The claim is that they rank attorneys. That is completely vacuous without knowing what the chosen input criteria (and their relative numerical values) are. Having a low ranking is not actionable; having an *artificially* low ranking due to incompetence or malice in the ranking system is.

The INPUTS are what determine if that numerical ranking produces factually incorrect information or is designed to penalize certain kinds of lawyers while claiming to be a "fair" system. Once that determination is made, it can be decided whether that inaccuracy or bias constitutes libel. It truly is not particularly complicated.

Re:Just another tool.

[Snaller]

"You claim to be logical, but don't actually use any logic"

Sure I do, I haven't been to their site (nor have I claimed to) this is theory. As I said it depends on what they say.

"The claim is that they rank attorneys."

Surely that is not the phrasing used

"Having a low ranking is not actionable; having an *artificially* low ranking due to incompetence or malice in the ranking system is."

Wow, that's a corrupt law. If its true, which it most likely isn't - like when people sue Google because they want a better rank. This is their rank, its not the word of god.

"The INPUTS are what determine if that numerical ranking produces factually incorrect information or is designed to penalize certain kinds of lawyers while claiming to be a "fair" system."

The ranking does not produce factually correct information, it represents how valuable the website think a laywer is - its their opinion. It shouldn't be that hard to understand.

Re:Just another tool.

[mr_matticus]

Wow, that's a corrupt law. If its true, which it most likely isn't - like when people sue Google because they want a better rank. This is their rank, its not the word of god. Please read what I wrote. I'll say it again. Having a low ranking is not actionable; having an *artificially* low ranking due to incompetence or malice in the ranking system is.

If someone tampered with Google's pagerank system to bury your page below its objective rank, you could sue for that, too. In fact, such allegations have been made with search engines. Google is fairly large and well-established, so they rarely have this problem.

 

The ranking does not produce factually correct information, it represents how valuable the website think a laywer is - its their opinion. It shouldn't be that hard to understand. That's a candidate for "obvious statement of the year." Of course it's their opinion. Do you not know what libel is? This site is offering its opinion in the context of providing advice to potential clients, manifesting its ranking as a factually accurate and impartial guide. They are providing a service, not a *personal* opinion of what they think of an attorney *based on their experience*. In the course of that service, they are obligated to disclose their subjectivity or they are required to abide by fair and equal standards.

The case is probably without merit. The information that proves or disproves that, though, will have nothing to do with the output and everything to do with the inputs.

Re:Just another tool.

[Snaller]

" Please read what I wrote. I'll say it again. Having a low ranking is not actionable; having an *artificially* low ranking due to incompetence or malice in the ranking system is."

I saw that and dismissed it since incompetence/malice is a subjective term for something which may simply be a different opinion when there is not objective definition of incompetence. "We don't think this criteria is that important - Well it is, so you are inceompetent!" Erh, no.

"That's a candidate for "obvious statement of the year." Of course it's their opinion. Do you not know what libel is?"

A false publication ... that damages a person's reputation.

So if they say this person is a drunk, that is false.

If they say, which they do, we think person A is better at handling your case than Person B - that's their opnion. They also say it is just their opnion and suggest people check other sources as well.

"This site is offering its opinion in the context of providing advice to potential clients, manifesting its ranking as a factually accurate and impartial guide."

They don't say factually accurate.

"They are providing a service, not a *personal* opinion of what they think of an attorney *based on their experience*. In the course of that service, they are obligated to disclose their subjectivity "

Google hasn't been forced to disclose their subjective pagerank system.

Re:Just another tool.

[mr_matticus]

Under your fictitious system, there could be no such thing as defamation. Anyone could say "Snaller is the biggest idiot on earth" and produce a "ranking system" which resulted in that conclusion. If that ranking system is specifically targeted so as to reduce your standing (i.e. reputation), that's libel. It can be as blatant as a system which targets you as an individual (-1500 starting score for "Snaller") or as subtle as a system which targets your attributes selectively (without basis or relevance to the scoring system).

Furthermore, any system which uses a "rank" system is assumed to be fair and appropriate, absent any publicized bias. A ranking system is no good if it is one-sided, and not disclosing that the system is in fact skewed misrepresents the service's stated. As for "they don't say factually accurate," guess again, dexter: http://www.avvo.com/avvo_guide/avvo_rating.

You've strayed from the original point, so I'll just accept that you are no longer arguing about the relevance of the inputs and are now just scrambling to be contrary. You lose. Better luck next time.

Re:Just another tool.

[Snaller]

"You've strayed from the original point,"

If so, thats because you confused me with all your nonsense.

"You lose."

Actually you do, you didn't manage to explain your position.

My Opinion?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lawyers are pussies, crybabies, and if they don't get their way they act like a 7 year old who can't have candy. Did I mention I hate lawyers?

Re:My Opinion?

[fyngyrz]

I can think of a few reasons why supreme court judges would be legitimately rated low. Support for blatant ex post facto laws; commerce clause inversion; allowing states to take people's property; allowing wiretapping before a warrant is issued (FISA); Allowing congress to blackmail the states by withholding highway (and other) funds; allowing the right to bear arms to be infringed upon; allowing government support of Christianity; outright ignoring the 10th amendment (see earlier reference to blackmail); cowardly and un-statesmanlike refusal to hear critical cases of government malfeasance (like Robert Newdow's); allowing the state to infringe upon the liberties of the citizens (drug war, censorship, marriage, sexuality, unreasonable copyright and patent terms and mechanisms; allowing the feds to step beyond the enumerated powers without requiring a constitutional convention; restricting freedom of speech (free speech zones, censorship, funeral zones, etc.)... that's all just off the top of my head.

Yeah, I could definitely see low supreme court ratings.

Re:My Opinion?

[fyngyrz]

Correction: "Robert Newdow" should be "Michael Newdow." Told you it was off the top of my head. :) My apologies for the error.

Re:My Opinion?

[cpt kangarooski]

I can think of a few reasons why supreme court judges would be legitimately rated low.

I suspect that you mean to say 'justices,' not 'judges.'

commerce clause inversion

Which would be, what? The negative commerce clause?

allowing states to take people's property

Why? States have always had that power. Indeed, the federal Constitution only requires that governments pay fair compensation to the owner when they seize property under the eminent domain power. It not only doesn't prohibit it, but by making it conditional, it supports the idea of eminent domain. Which is not a bad idea, actually; that is how governments builds roads, among other things.

Allowing congress to blackmail the states by withholding highway (and other) funds

So you're saying that the Constitution imposes limits on the federal government spending its money which would prohibit this? Please feel free to point them out.

cowardly and un-statesmanlike refusal to hear critical cases of government malfeasance (like Robert Newdow's)

Pft. Newdow's case was hardly 'critical,' though I also would've liked to have it heard. But the Constitution does put significant procedural limits on the federal courts, and Newdow really did have a problem with standing. The Supreme Court once told George Washington to piss off (more politely than that) under similar circumstances, once. If you're going to complain that they are too loose with the Constitution, you need to realize that it is a two-edged argument.

Re:My Opinion?

[Mr. Underbridge]

Interesting mixture. I'll abbreviate your post to:

"I don't like the Supreme Court because they do too much bench legislation for causes I don't advocate. I also don't like the Supreme Court because they don't do enough bench legislation for caues I do advocate.

Perhaps you should be asking Congress to solve these problems.

Re:My Opinion?

[Old Benjamin]

Why? States have always had that power. Indeed, the federal Constitution only requires that governments pay fair compensation to the owner when they seize property under the eminent domain power. It not only doesn't prohibit it, but by making it conditional, it supports the idea of eminent domain. Which is not a bad idea, actually; that is how governments builds roads, among other things.

See: Fair compensation. It is fair market value, but there is no market value when the government condemns something.

So you're saying that the Constitution imposes limits on the federal government spending its money which would prohibit this? Please feel free to point them out.The Ninth amendment clearly establishes states rights. withholding funding is like saying to a convict, you're free to go, but we'll shoot you if you do :)

Re:My Opinion?

[cpt kangarooski]

See: Fair compensation. It is fair market value, but there is no market value when the government condemns something.

Which is why the government will make an offer based on their appraisal of the value. And if you don't like it, you can negotiate for a better price, and ultimately sue for a better price. Then each side brings in appraisers and a jury decides based upon the evidence presented to them.

This isn't difficult. Courts have to make decisions about how much things cost all the time.

The Ninth amendment clearly establishes states rights.

No, the Ninth merely says that the enumeration of rights elsewhere in the Constitution cannot be read to mean that they are the only rights. It doesn't establish any rights at all, in fact. Nor does it say how many rights there are, or what they are.

Also, you pretty obviously haven't read it, because it doesn't mention the states at all. "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Do you see the word 'states' in there? I don't.

Re:My Opinion?

[dangitman]

Support for blatant ex post facto laws; commerce clause inversion; allowing states to take people's property; allowing wiretapping before a warrant is issued (FISA); Allowing congress to blackmail the states by withholding highway (and other) funds;

Are you kidding? That's what makes Supreme Court justices so great!

Re:My Opinion?

[Old Benjamin]

You're right about the ninth amendment, I meant the tenth. About fair market value, the point is that when the government condemns a house, it is no longer worth much. Plus costs of moving, and generally being uprooted. There are legitimate uses of eminent domain, but there are just as many illegitimate.

Re:My Opinion?

[cpt kangarooski]

You're right about the ninth amendment, I meant the tenth.

Okay, this is the amendment that reads "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved for the States respectively, or to the people."

So, if the power to spend federal monies was not delegated to the United States, then you'd have a point. Let's see what Article I has to say:

"The Congress shall have power ... to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States."

"No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law; and a regular statement and account of receipts and expenditures of all public money shall be published from time to time.

So it looks as though Congress has the power to spend federal money. They have to do so pursuant to the laws that they enact, and they have to account for it, and it has to basically be for national purposes. But they can spend it. That means it was delegated to the United States, and thus does not fall under the ambit of rights reserved to the states under the Tenth Amendment.

You want to try again?

About fair market value, the point is that when the government condemns a house, it is no longer worth much.

That's not how the value is estimated. They look at what the value would be if the owner was going to sell it at the time. Honestly, this is how appraisal of anything works. The only way you know what your car is worth without actually selling it -- which is an important questions for insuring it, for instance -- is by comparing it with other cars that are being sold. This is not rocket science.

Plus costs of moving, and generally being uprooted.

I'd want to check, but I don't see why this would be relevant. Those costs are not part of the costs of the actual property. If you live on Monster Island (don't worry, it's just a name), and it would cost you $10,000 to move to someplace safe, like Tokyo, and your house is only worth $5,000, then you're screwed. You can't afford to move. But it doesn't mean that your house is suddenly worth $15,000. Indeed, the problem is that it's not!

Also it's worth pointing out that a great number of takings are basically just taking your road frontage so that a road can be widened. You lose some of the yard, if it's a house, or parking lot, if it's a business, or nothing in particular if it's farmland, or a vacant lot or something, but they don't often take the whole parcel. Still, not every square foot is worth the same as the rest; if your lot is half swamp and half gold mine, and you only lose half, which half becomes pretty important in terms of valuation. Not everything is urban renewal projects or Central Arteries.

Re:My Opinion?

[Old Benjamin]

Costs of moving covers the truck, possibly getting a new job. Finding things in a new community. Your children losing all neighborhood friends. Not moving to a more expensive house

About states rights, not everything in the constitution is written there. Privacy is mentioned nowhere in the constitution, but its right there in Roe, pulled out of the ninth and fourteenth amendments. The Tenth amendment shows the concept of states rights- that states aren't part of the Union, the Union is made of states. This was the original intent of the Union, it was ruined by the fourteenth amendment. Notice that we call other nations states. Ever heard of a nations-state? The concept of state is an independent nation. These United States is just an alliance, the constitution their treaty. The federal government does not have the right to blackmail the states. The states have the right to set their own speed limit. The tenth amendment shows that since the federal government does not have the power to set a speed limit, the states get it. Except the federal government is taking it by blackmail

. Only one thing is going to fix this, and that is a nice, dirty civil war. It may not happen in our lifetimes, but at this rate, it will happen soon.

Re:My Opinion?

[Harmonious Botch]

"I don't like the supreme court because they seem to have forgotton that the constitution is a document that is intended to limit the power of government. And almost every 'cause' I name is an instance of the legislature or exec going to far and the supremes failing to stop them."

There, fixed that abreviation for you.

Re:My Opinion?

[TheSeer2]

So you're saying that the Constitution imposes limits on the federal government spending its money which would prohibit this? Please feel free to point them out.

Just because it isn't unconstitutional doesn't mean it isn't wrong.

Re:My Opinion?

[datapharmer]

First let me state that the Constitution says nothing about eminent domain. This was a bit of a loose interpretation of the 5th Amendment by the Supreme Court. Most of the founding fathers would take great issue with how land is seized by the government today if they were alive IMHO.

That aside, cost of moving is relevant because the Supreme Court ruled that the property owner "must be justly compensated". Justice doesn't involve throwing people out on the street with $5,000 when the cost to move is $15,000. Not to say it doesn't happen, just that it shouldn't. An interesting piece of fiction surrounding this issue (in an Australian setting) is the movie The Castle. I highly recommend it.

Re:My Opinion?

[cpt kangarooski]

First let me state that the Constitution says nothing about eminent domain.

Of course it does. The Fifth Amendment says, among other things, "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." If the federal government didn't have an eminent domain power, there would be no need to restrict the use of that power; thus, it must have that power.

the property owner "must be justly compensated"

Yes, but the question is, for what? The cost of the property, or that and other associated costs, and if so, which? Like I said before, I don't know whether the moving costs, for example, would also have to be paid. Personally, I'd think not, but this isn't an area of law I ordinarily deal with, and so I don't know the answer. (Which, btw, would tend to vary from state to state anyway, since states also have this power, and have their own restrictions on it as well as the restriction from the Fifth Amendment) Maybe those costs would have to be paid. If I particularly cared, I could check, but I'm content enough to not worry about it for the moment. This is particularly so given the original direction of the thread.

An interesting piece of fiction surrounding this issue (in an Australian setting) is the movie The Castle. I highly recommend it.

I'll check it out.

Re:My Opinion?

[fyngyrz]

I suspect that you mean to say 'justices,' not 'judges.'

Yep, that'd be close, all right. Perhaps I meant injustices.

Which would be, what? The negative commerce clause?

That would be the feds marching into California and swooping down on medical marijuana users based on a commerce clause argument that 100% intrastate commerce "could be" or "could have been" interstate commerce, and so the feds claim to have jurisdiction to screw with California law, legislators, and citizens. Which they do not. The ruling and the reasoning is sophist nonsense. The constitution says in sec 8, para 1 through para 3, that The Congress shall have Power To... regulate Commerce... among the several States. That's it. No more than that. It's an enumerated power, and there is no authority implied or specified that allows mucking about with commerce internal to a state. Furthermore, the 10th amendment makes the limit explicit: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. So there you have it. They have the authority to regulate intrastate commerce, but not interstate commerce. The court is out of line, and so are the feds.

[taking property by force and coercion] Which is not a bad idea, actually; that is how governments builds roads, among other things.

That observation in no way precludes the fact that there are other ways to build roads, including ways that don't screw with people's properties at all. You can go under them; you can go around them; worst case, you can even go over them, though you certainly ought to pay for that privilege. It is wrong to steal, and it is no less wrong when the government does it.

The idea of "fair compensation" is intellectually bankrupt. If I own a piece of land, and I want to sell it, that is where it can be determined that it has a specific monetary value. The way that is done is that when you offer enough money to satisfy me, I'll let you have it.

If you don't, I won't. But if I own that property and for whatever reason, I do not want to sell it, then you cannot put a value on it that equates to "reasonable compensation." How do you compensate for my ancestors having raised generations there? How do you compensate for the view, or the fishing in my lake? How do you compensate for the fact that my brother died in that house, or that I was married there? Or that I built it by hand? Or that I lost my virginity on the living room couch?

The answer, of course, is that you can't, not that it is fair to use some number a bunch of people I didn't delegate my feelings and associations to invented based on their feelings. I'll tell you how it actually works: force and threat of force. Coercion. There isn't a reasonable step in the entire process.

So you're saying that the Constitution imposes limits on the federal government spending its money which would prohibit this? Please feel free to point them out

Sure, I'll point the problem out. It is what we call blackmail, where one party is forced to do something it does not believe is legal, ethical or otherwise proper, by another party that wields a coercive force. I'll point something else out, too: the trust the people put in the government to build and maintain a general infrastructure doesn't include the presumption that said power will be used as a weapon, nor does it include the presumption that the feds won't build roads in some states, while building in others. The collection of taxes is (barely) tolerated with the idea that said collection is done for the common good, not in order to wield a coercive force on the states. The fact that the feds do wield such coercive forces is contrary to article 1, section 8 of the

Re:My Opinion?

[cpt kangarooski]

About states rights, not everything in the constitution is written there.

Sure, but you at least need some wiggle room. You need to find, somewhere, some arguable limit on the federal spending power. An implied limit would be fine, a penumbral limit, fine, but so far I'm not seeing any support for it, nor are you showing me any.

The states have the right to set their own speed limit. The tenth amendment shows that since the federal government does not have the power to set a speed limit, the states get it.

That is absolutely right. The states can set whatever speed limit they want -- within some other limits, e.g. the commerce power would prohibit a 1mph speed limit on the interstate -- and the federal government can't stop them.

But that doesn't mean that the states can force the federal government to give them money. If the states want to fight with the federal government, then that's fine, but unless you can find something in the Constitution to help the states, the federal government doesn't have to spend its money with them. It isn't blackmail anymore than working at a job for wages is slavery. It is unequal bargaining power, but I don't see a remedy for that in the Constitution either.

. Only one thing is going to fix this, and that is a nice, dirty civil war. It may not happen in our lifetimes, but at this rate, it will happen soon.

I think that a civil war over the speed limit would be a stupider reason for going to war than Jenkin's ear, and only slightly less stupid than the pig. Get some perspective.

Re:My Opinion?

[fyngyrz]

First let me state that the Constitution says nothing about eminent domain. This was a bit of a loose interpretation of the 5th Amendment by the Supreme Court

Here's the relevant part of the fifth, emphasis mine, other subject matter clipped:

No person shall... be deprived of... property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

So the authority to offer compensation for taking land is there. The problem is that phrase "without just compensation." No such thing as "just compensation" can be established by third parties if the property is not offered for sale. The value of the property to the owner is as high as the owner says it is, and if that's too high for the buyer, they can't buy it. From there, one realizes that if just compensation is cannot be offered to the owner, then there is no power to take, only to offer.

I have, among other things, a Marantz 1300DC integrated amplifier. This is a classic piece of stereo audio gear that is both rare and interesting to some who enjoy great audio reproduction. I don't want to sell it, and I don't need to sell it. If capt. Kangarooski wants to buy it, he has two options: Offer me sufficient compensation that I will change my mind and accept, that is, I would consider his offer consider just, or else he can try to take it by force. If he can muster enough force, he may succeed; however, this does not make his action correct. It is ludicrous to say that he could ask someone who thinks they know general audio values what the value of that amp is, perhaps you, let's say, and then take the amp while giving me what you advise is your opinion of its value. The only correct action is to offer a price that I agree upon. Because that would be just. He is trying to defend the government taking by coercion; it is an indefensible position.

Re:My Opinion?

[fyngyrz]

They have the authority to regulate intrastate commerce, but not interstate commerce.

Of course, I meant to say: "They have the authority to regulate interstate commerce, but not intrastate commerce." Again, my apologies.

Re:My Opinion?

[cpt kangarooski]

It's an enumerated power, and there is no authority implied or specified that allows mucking about with commerce internal to a state.

Unless that commerce is interstate commerce despite remaining within the state. Honestly, your argument has lost since Gibbons, which was back in the 1820's.

That observation in no way precludes the fact that there are other ways to build roads, including ways that don't screw with people's properties at all. You can go under them; you can go around them; worst case, you can even go over them, though you certainly ought to pay for that privilege.

The funny part is that tunneling would 'screw with' the owner's property, as would building an elevated road. Due to aircraft, we no longer have 'cuius est solum, eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos' but you weren't quite going that high up. Also an elevated road can be quite bothersome. The Central Artery in Boston was elevated, and had nightmarish effects that have cost a lot of money to ameliorate. Of course, they replaced it with a tunnel that brings with it the nightmare that it'll collapse on you....

Anyway, it's actually a real pain in the ass to build a road when you have to get the property owners in the path to voluntarily sell to you. Some will sell for a reasonable price, some will try to get an unreasonably high price, and some will absolutely refuse to sell. If we did it that way, nothing would ever get built, given the hundreds or thousands of different owners along the path for the road. Going around might work, but it would make the roads a mess and insanely inefficient. Imagine driving from New York City to Philadelphia via Missouri.

Governments derive their powers from their people, with the idea being that if people could live harmoniously together without government we would, but in practice we don't, so we put together governments to help with this. We invest a takings power with the government because it is recognized that the government works better for the populace as a whole when it can work for them without each individual having significant veto power over it. (This is also why votes are usually taken by majorities without unanimity being required.) We also recognize that we don't want the government running roughshod over individuals, so we put in some protections for them too.

If I own a piece of land, and I want to sell it, that is where it can be determined that it has a specific monetary value.

Okay. Alice is a homeowner and Bob is an arsonist. Bob burns down Alice's house. Since Alice didn't want to sell, her house has no known value. Does this mean that Bob doesn't have to pay anything to Alice? Or alternatively, can we compute the value, by looking at the property in question, and comparing it with other, similar property, for which we have a history of value as determined by the market?

Honestly, how someone can be against the idea of appraisal is just astounding to me.

How do you compensate for [blah, blah, blah].

Generally a check or a wire transfer.

It is what we call blackmail, where one party is forced to do something it does not believe is legal, ethical or otherwise proper, by another party that wields a coercive force.

So you're saying that federal highway funding is a coercive force. In that case, what damage did the federal government do to the states prior to the creation of the interstate highway system? Was it a lot of damage, them not spending all that money?

Or are you an ass, who thinks that the states have gotten addicted to federal money and somehow have a right to it because they cannot properly balance the amount of government spending in their state with the amount of revenue they, themselves, can raise? If a state wants to ignore federal mandates tied to federal spending, all they need to do is either 1) go without that spending, or 2) get the money for that spending themselves. No one is stopping them. Well, other than enough of the voters to win elections, who

Re:My Opinion?

[cpt kangarooski]

So the authority to offer compensation for taking land is there.

Yes. You've agreed that the government has the power to take land. Remember that word: take. Not 'buy,' or 'purchase,' but take. That is to take it from the previous owner, whether that person likes it or not.

Which brings us to this: No such thing as "just compensation" can be established by third parties if the property is not offered for sale.

Assuming that you're right -- you're not, btw -- then we'd have a little conundrum.

You are saying that the government can forcibly take property from people, but only if it is offered for sale, which means that it isn't being taken at all. That is a nonsensical position.

Alternatively, we could say that the government has the power to take land that is not offered for sale, but only if they pay a just price for it, again, regardless of the fact that it isn't for sale. This leaves you with the problem of computing that price, but this is presumably doable, and if there is an argument about it, it can be settled in court like so many other arguments.

The value of the property to the owner is as high as the owner says it is

Actually, that is wrong. The price is as high as the owner says it is. But if the price is too high, then the property will not sell. The actual value of the property is whatever you can, in fact, sell it for. This is often considerably lower than the initial asking price.

For example, I have a rock (it's one of those tiger-repelling rocks) for which I ask one hundred billion dollars. But if all I can ever actually sell it for is a mere one million dollars, then it's worth one million dollars and nothing more. You're on Slashdot, I'm sure you understand this in application. Think of how rapidly computers depreciate in value. The second you open the box it becomes used, and thus even if you sold it the next day, without anything having come out with better specs, you still cannot get as high a price for it as you paid. Cars do the same thing.

Re:My Opinion?

[fyngyrz]

Unless that commerce is interstate commerce despite remaining within the state

See, you probably didn't even have to tell us you were a lawyer; your ability to consider an absolutely absurd and contradictory argument perfectly reasonable might have done it. "Unless that is a pillow despite being a knife" "Unless that color is blue, despite being red." "Unless you actually threatened me, despite having never threatened anyone in your life."

[arguments about elevation, tunneling, ignoring going around]

I lived under the elevated in Chicago for years. Worked fine for me and them. I lived over the subway in Manhattan at 168th street and Broadway. Not only worked, it was very convenient. I've also lived underneath a highway bridge on route 209 in Milford, Pennsylvania. Used to love the sound of the trucks. Your arguments are empty.

We invest a takings power with the government

No, "we" don't. The constitution did (a group of people who never consulted either you, or me) and they limited it by requiring reasonable compensation. Again, your arguments are empty.

Or are you an ass

Ah. Here we go. Poor fellow loses argument, resorts to name calling. How tactically advanced. Work for you in court, does it?

Yeah, I've had enough cryptic, threatening ass-talk from you, thanks.

I'm truly sorry, I had no intent to be cryptic or threatening. I just thought you would understand the remark. What I was saying is that your job - lawyer - is one of using bad law against the citizens. We've seen this before, Nuremberg comes to mind. You jumped on here, all full of vim and vigor, and attempted to defend positions that support the out of control government; posting supportively about areas in which the government is radically abusing the citizens. Eventually, as evidenced by another poster's remark about a "nice dirty civil war", enough citizens will tire of this to rise up against this abuse. I doubt it'll be as radical as the advice of Shakespeare's character Dick the Butcher in Henry VI ("First, let's kill all the lawyers.") It'll probably simply be show trials, just like those in Nuremberg, and probably with the same results. It wasn't a threat, it was just an observation brought from, and supported by, history. Abuse the people, eventually, they'll get tired of it, and things generally go downhill for the abusers after that. And really, try not to be so defensive. It isn't my fault you chose to support the government's abuses; and it isn't my fault that you signed your posts with the claim that you are a lawyer. These are your claims, your positions, and frankly, if there is anger here, your best solution is to go do something more positive and quit supporting the abusers.

Re:My Opinion?

[Fordiman]

The funniest thing is Browne's claim that his rating and the publicity surrounding his complaint (which wouldn't exist if he weren't being a little bitch about it) are damaging his practice.

If so, fucking good. The cream rises to the top, you whiny little system manipulator.

I doubt it though. Even obvious sharks get work, and enough of it, apparently, to run commercials.

Re:My Opinion?

[wirelessbuzzers]

The price is as high as the owner says it is. But if the price is too high, then the property will not sell. The actual value of the property is whatever you can, in fact, sell it for. Publilius Syrus notwithstanding, this is incorrect in the free market: the owner's valuation of the property matters, too. This isn't his asking price, but the maximum amount of money $X such that if the owner were given $X and his property stolen and put on auction, he would bid $X-epsilon to take it back.

Because there is a significant cost in the use of new property, particularly houses (between moving expenses, time and effort, social effects and whatever), the owner's valuation of a particular property is likely to be greater than everyone else's. After all, if he didn't think think this were true, he'd put it up for sale.

For example, I have a rock (it's one of those tiger-repelling rocks) for which I ask one hundred billion dollars. But, unless you're frequently harassed by tigers, that's probably not your valuation of the rock. If I took your rock by force, and gave you one hundred billion dollars, would you offer me $99,999,999,999 to have your rock back?

Think of how rapidly computers depreciate in value. The computer market isn't very rational, but depreciation of cars and computers in this way is somewhat rational. In addition to shipping, tax and so on, a third party doesn't trust the seller, or the seller's assessment of the computer's condition. Nor does he trust that he will be able to get the manufacturer's warranty, or that all the standard components will be included. There's also the risk of problems not likely to be covered by a manufacturer's warranty, such as dead pixels, a subtle whine, or what have you.

Re:My Opinion?

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

Just because it isn't unconstitutional doesn't mean it isn't wrong.

Yeah, but "just because it isn't constitutional" does mean the Supreme Court shouldn't touch it (except for the limited cases of original jurisdiction, of course).

"Right or wrong" is a function of the legislature. Courts deal in "legal or illegal" (or, for the Supremes, "constitutional or unconstitutional"). I for one am glad that's the way it is, because that's a lot more adjudicable. Getting agreement on what's written down in the law and how the facts fit that -- that's hard but doable. Getting agreement on "right and wrong" requires deliberation, consensus building, and usually, compromise -- and that's better suited to a democratically elected legislature than an appointed judge.

Of course that's long, messy, and almost never fully satisfying -- which is why almost everyone (even those most loudly decrying "activist judges") clamor for the courts to "settle" issues.

Re:My Opinion?

[s4m7]

...interstate commerce despite remaining within the state...

Interstate
-adjective
1. connecting or involving different states: interstate commerce.

It's really not a complicated concept. Unless you're a lawyer and words don't mean what they mean... Oh. Apparently I'm an insensitve clod.

Okay. Alice is a homeowner and Bob is an arsonist. Bob burns down Alice's house. Since Alice didn't want to sell, her house has no known value. Does this mean that Bob doesn't have to pay anything to Alice? Or alternatively, can we compute the value, by looking at the property in question, and comparing it with other, similar property, for which we have a history of value as determined by the market? Honestly, how someone can be against the idea of appraisal is just astounding to me.

So, surely, Bob the arsonist is the same as government imminent domain? In that case, not only should the government be forced to "compensate" for Alice's loss, but also do time in a penitentiary. The poster was not arguing against appraisal per se, but coercion. That smell is your straw man is burning.

Or are you an ass, who thinks that the states have gotten addicted to federal money and somehow have a right to it because they cannot properly balance the amount of government spending in their state with the amount of revenue they, themselves, can raise?

The federal government takes taxes to fund interstate commerce. That road money is meant to build equal access infrastructure for the people from which it is collected, regardless of whether their state complies with extra-jurisdictional demands from the feds. It's not the feds money, nor is it the states... it's yours and mine. For someone who claims to be a lawyer, your argumentation style appears to rest on using the word "ass" until you think you're right. Thank god you're not my lawyer.

Re:My Opinion?

[fyngyrz]

Yes. You've agreed that the government has the power to take land. Remember that word: take. Not 'buy,' or 'purchase,' but take. That is to take it from the previous owner, whether that person likes it or not.

No. Read it again: "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. It says specifically that without just compensation, the power to take is nullified. Nor shall private property be taken - in other words, it isn't a blanket permission to take. The phrase just compensation with regard to your property cannot be simply what I think it is worth. The idea of just compensation has to mean that you, the person from whom the property is proposed to be taken, will feel that the taking is just. Any agreement that is just to one side only is not just at all. It is simply exercise of power. That's an axiom.

It is absolutely nonsensical for me to take your car, home, or library of first editions for any amount if you do not agree that the amount is just. No sensible individual would agree that the owner of property doesn't have the final word in the selling price.

Does this mean that sometimes the government might not be able to cut a deal? Yes, it does. And that's an immensely good thing. They can go around. They can go over. They can go under. They can increase or otherwise sweeten their offer. They can build elsewhere. And they should do these things.

The current stink about property takings was raised to a new level by Connecticut taking some woman's home because they weren't satisfied with the tax revenue they were getting from it, and they thought that by taking it, they could earn more. This is what happens when you interpret "just compensation" as the opinion of other people. Things get taken for arbitrary and pernicious reasons, people have their homes destroyed, and we slide further down the slope towards absolute government power. Read the constitution. READ it. It is very clear that those people were trying very hard indeed to limit the power of government. Limits and conditions abound. Whenever you see someone arguing that such-and-such a phrase in the constitution wasn't intended to limit the federal government, you can be almost certain that they are wrong, because that is what the document does from beginning to end, and to confirm this without any possibility of doubt, the authors repeatedly said that was what they were doing. The limit on taking is just compensation.

To argue that just compensation doesn't account for the owner's assessment is just plain wrongheaded, because it makes a mockery of the word "just", and whatever else you may accuse the authors of the constitution of, it is very clear they were not in the habit of mockery — they were serious as death, because death was the currency used to pay for this document. They also knew far too well the sting of uncontrolled power, and they wanted none of it.

Assuming that you're right -- you're not, btw -- then we'd have a little conundrum.

You are saying that the government can forcibly take property from people, but only if it is offered for sale, which means that it isn't being taken at all. That is a nonsensical position.

I am right, and so is the constitution. Lower law is wrong. Which is not uncommon, as I would expect you to know full well. You are using the word "forcibly", and pretending I agreed to it, but the very first thing I would point out is that "forcibly, force, coercion, threat and steal" do not appear in the 5th amendment of the constitution — but "just compensation" does. I am saying that the government can walk up to a property owner who may or may not be considering selling, and say "We want this property. We are required to provide just compensation in order to be able to acquire it. What would that be?" And the owner then says one of the following: "X in funds", "X in

Re:My Opinion?

[Miamicanes]

Things get even more tangled in Florida, thanks to the way property taxes are assessed. Somebody might have bought a house in 2000 for $180,000 that today has a market value of $460,000, but a taxable value of $220,000 because the taxable value isn't allowed to appreciate faster than the rate of inflation, regardless of what happens to the real estate market as a whole. It's great if you've owned the same house for years, but it sucks if you ever want to move, because it basically means that someone who sells that house for $460,000, then buys a new & smaller house or condo for the same amount of money, would see their annual property taxes more than double because their NEW tax rate would be based on the purchase price of the new home -- $460k vs $220k. At the moment, at least, you can't take your old homestead exemption tax assessment cap with you if you move.

So... let's pretend that our normal Dade County family with house valued at $460k and taxable value of $220k finds itself unfortunate enough to be in the way of a planned freeway widening. Even if the family were offered $500k for their house, and another $50k to compensate them for the cost and annoyance of having to move, they could legitimately argue that the seemingly generous offer STILL wouldn't make them whole, because if they bought a comparable home a block away, their property taxes would STILL go up by at least $5k/year in perpetuity (more or less).

So... under current property tax laws, there really IS no objectively fair compensation that can be calculated as a one-time lump-sum payment that's guaranteed to be fair to BOTH the homeowner and government. If the government paid an amount that included an extra $100k to compensate them for 20 years of taxes $5,000 higher than they'd otherwise be, then the Florida Legislature rolled back everyone's taxes to (potentially hpothetical) pre-2002 levels, the family would make out like bandits and enjoy a huge windfall. On the other hand, if the law never changed, the family would neither make nor lose money for the next 20-30 years, but would eventually run out of surplus funds and WOULD start to lose money every year thereafter. Frankly, the fact that the legislature hasn't gotten its act together long enough to AT LEAST grant portability to eminent-domain sales is inexcusable.

Re:My Opinion?

[ShadowsHawk]

A bit OT, but I assume you're referring to people protesting at funerals. If so, wouldn't it be easier to simply arrest the protesters for disturbing the peace? I would assume that there would be tension with the possibility of violence. Seems to fit the DtP better than most of current uses.

Re:My Opinion?

[fyngyrz]

I see no need to arrest them at all. Any more than I see a need to arrest a child screaming in a McDonalds, or a man a street-corner extolling the virtues of some lifestyle, political point, or religion. Public speech on public property or on the speaker's own property should be unconditionally protected. Censorship is a sign of a weak, not to mention weakening, country.

Re:My Opinion?

[ShadowsHawk]

There's a slight difference between protesting at a political rally and protesting at a funeral. If the protesters are trying to show their distaste for war, there are any number of monuments to choose from or they could stage one outside the Whitehouse.

"Public speech on public property or on the speaker's own property should be unconditionally protected."

I strongly disagree. There are circumstances (fire in a crowded room) that limit your freedom of speech. I think the determining factor is if your free speech is going to incite intentional or unintentional (but foreseeable) violence.

I find it particularly disgusting that people would protest something as personal as a funeral.

reality has a well known slanderous bias

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all "fuck you," "no, fuck you!" Marone.

Ironically ...

[WrongSizeGlass]

... if John Henry Browne does sue Avvo's computer ranking program it will make him a bad lawyer and thus the ranking will have been a self fulfilling prophecy.

Re:Ironically ...

[dwater]

> ... if John Henry Browne does sue Avvo's computer ranking program it will make him a bad lawyer and thus the ranking will have been a self fulfilling prophecy.

Unless he wins (this is in the US, right?), in which case they'll be obliged to increase his rating.

"Think I'm a bad lawyer? I'll show you!"...."See, I told you I was a good lawyer."

tough love

[mathfeel]

Man: ...but I LOVE YOU! Computer: That's so adorable, but you are just not good enough for ME! Man: Oh, no, you don't dump me! I dump you! Better, I sue you!

Nice sig

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent's Sig: When members of a profession start referring to non-members as 'laymen', it is time to start shooting them.

Shooting whom? The members of the profession or the laymen? If you're going to call for someone's head, you should at least be a little more specific about whose head you want served to you on a silver platter.

Re:Nice sig

[mybadluck22]

We can solve this with a simple u-substitution.
u = "start referring to nonmembers as 'laymen'"

When members of a profession u, it is time to start shooting them.

It becomes clear, now.

Re:Nice sig

[hauntingthunder]

laymen how old skool - evryone uses "Civilians" now a days.

This should set a precedent

[loudersoft]

imagine what would happen to consumers who were negatively affected by soundscan's demonstration of the buying patterns of human beings and its effect on the decline of popular culture in music? we could recoup millions in damage to lost souls.

Re:This should set a precedent

[loudersoft]

*damage: people who bought britney spears and avril lavigne records because they thought higher soundscan numbers meant "cooler" only to later discover that they had fallen victim to the fallacy of computer data

heh

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess he is suing for bad karma!*drum*

Thank you! I will be here all night! Try the trout, they are delicious.

It's an input problem

[MightyYar]

There's nothing wrong with computer rankings, but they inputs are very, very important. We shouldn't pretend that they are different somehow from human rankings, since humans still carefully select the inputs.

An example that most here can relate to is the US News and World Report college rankings. It's a whole other topic in itself, but suffice it to say that there is a lot of discussion about their inputs and how it has influenced the way colleges operate. Most colleges try to get many small donations instead of a few big ones, because the rankings weigh number of donors more heavily than total amount donated. They encourage many, many applications from just about anyone because they get ranked based on the number of applications that they reject.

Once people learn what the inputs are, they just game the system.

Re:It's an input problem

[Dymus]

And it isn't terribly difficult to determine what the inputs are. I am ranked at 8.1 (only having been licensed for two years) which is higher than all but one of the attorneys practicing in the same field as me at my firm (ranging between 25 and 6 years of practice). After reviewing all of our AVVO pages, it appears my rating is boosted significantly because AVVO discovered I received two CALI awards in law school. Anyone in the business knows these awards are more or less meaningless in practice (especially since the two I got have nothing to do with my practice area), but they appear to have a significant impact on my score. Based on our informal analysis, it looks like you start with a baseline of around 5, get a boost of about 1 for every award they found for you, and reduced a ton if you have any bar disciplinary actions pending. I played around with it by updating my profile with organizational memberships and even got endorsed by an attorney friend of mine and it had no impact on the score. The key seems to be how much the AVVO system can find on you on its own, without you updating it. So more important than what the inputs are may be determining where AVVO is farming its data from. Overall, it seems to be that the criticism the ranking system is receiving is pretty valid.

Re:It's an input problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's an output problem.

I can write a program that contains "if name=='Browne': return 0". The program is not defamatory. The input is not defamatory. But presenting its output as a reliable rating might be.

It's the difference between a webpage with "my favorite word is 'sneakers'" and "the root password on smtp.rei.com is 'sneakers'". It's not the datum itself, but what value you place in it.

If they claim the output is meaningful, and it's obviously not, then that seems analogous to fraud. If they just say "here's a formula we scratched out on a napkin ... and here's what it does to a bunch of publicly available data", then maybe not.

Re:It's an input problem

[MightyYar]

I think we are saying the same thing - I didn't mean the actual input data, but the type of data selected as inputs. I should have just said the algorithm.

Ugh...

[rakslice]

Is it just me, or does it seem like there are a lot of legal professionals who normally have no problem applying existing law to novel situations but who turn into drooling idiots as soon as a computer program or computer network becomes involved?

Re:Ugh...

[suv4x4]

Is it just me, or does it seem like there are a lot of legal professionals who normally have no problem applying existing law to novel situations but who turn into drooling idiots as soon as a computer program or computer network becomes involved?

Apparently not. They'd be drooling idiots if they just said "well, it's a computer rating. They're expected to be wrong, I'm fine with it" and did nothing about it.

Re:Ugh...

[mangu]

...who turn into drooling idiots as soon as a computer program or computer network becomes involved

It happens because human laws have a lot of flexibility that computers don't have. When human logic turns against them, people respond with "don't be a fool, you know what I mean". You can't do that with computers.

It's a simple fact that this guy is not as good as some other lawyers, according to a given set of objective factors. If they change the algorithm to improve his rating, then what about other lawyers that are downgraded by the new algorithm? Computer algorithms aren't flexible, they cannot be bent so that everyone comes out looking good.

Re:Ugh...

[dangitman]

Computer algorithms aren't flexible,

What? Of course they are flexible. They can be programmed to calculate whatever you want them to, and they can be changed on a whim.

they cannot be bent so that everyone comes out looking good.

Huh? Of course they can, you just program them to make everybody look good.

"Can a computer program be considered derogatory?"

[jfclavette]

Uh....

switch (person.getSkinColor()) { ... } ?

From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

I have never lost a jury trial involving sexual misconduct (rape, child molestation, etc.)

Huh? This guy has been a lawyer so long that he's actually proud of the fact that he helps child molesters walk around freely?

John Henry Browne, Slashdot (and hopefully Google) confirms your reputation!

Re:From TFA

[WilliamSChips]

You seemed to have missed the difference between being accused of a crime and committing a crime. For example, Mumia Abu-Jamal was accused of killing a cop. Because of a miscarriage of justice, we don't know whether he committed the crime or not.

Re:From TFA

[Torvaun]

They could, you know, have been wrongfully accused. See how the legal system is supposed to work? Accused but innocent gets to walk free.

Re:From TFA

[Fordiman]

Well, just the act of suing an independant rating system for giving him a bad rating (rather than deciding, for the good of his industry, to give some counseling on how lawyers likely should be rated), shows a certain amount of petulance and a certain amount of wanting his reputation to remain unquantized.

In short: I'm never hiring this asshole.

Re:From TFA

[Fordiman]

Funny thing that. My girlfriend always gets out of jury duty by opening her blues up big and saying, 'Hey, if the cops went to all the trouble, they gotta be guilty, right?'

It helps that she looks like a good respectable blueblooded girl.

Re:From TFA

[Kaenneth]

Well, just the act of suing an independant rating system for giving him a bad rating (rather than deciding, for the good of his industry, to give some counseling on how lawyers likely should be rated), shows a certain amount of petulance and a certain amount of wanting his reputation to remain unquantized.

In short: I'm never hiring this asshole.

Well, how do you plan to defend against those charges of child molestation?

Matlock never lost a case... maybe you could hire him.

Re:From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are going to go the "accused but did not commit the crime" route - at least pick someone who might NOT have committed the crime.

Re:From TFA

[Fordiman]

I don't like little kids. I mean, at all. Can't stand 'em.

My girlfriend and I have a 'no baby' rule, and I don't run any activities for children.

I'll leav the answer to your question to preists and boy scout councellors.

Defamatory?

[piojo]

Well, if they made it clear to viewers how their ratings are calculated, they should not be responsible for harm done. In that case they would just be stating facts (e.g., rating = this lawyer wins X% of his cases - this lawyer charges %Y percent over the industry average for their type of cases...) But if they don't tell people where the ratings come from, then I wonder: how is writing a shitty algorithm that says defamatory stuff about people any better than just saying defamatory stuff about people. People are responsible for the computer programs that they knowingly use.

Re:Defamatory?

[Jarjarthejedi]

Mod parent up, that's a great point. If you can't defame a person using a Computer Program output based on an algorithm then people can just design algorithms to defame people and have no repercussions.

Everyone in RL judges people based on algorithms in their heads, "He didn't do as well as person Y, and charges more than Z". Typical defamation cases are thrown against people who have messed up algorithms, "He wears white all the time...I hate white" or poor input, "I've only seen him lose". Why shouldn't a computer programmer be held to the same standards when they make judgments about people?

I'd say that if you're willing to reveal your algorithm you shouldn't be able to be sued, as a poor algorithm will garner more laughter than defamation. If you're not willing to reveal it, however, then you should be treated the same way as if you were saying what the program is as it's probably using your algorithm and input.

Re:Defamatory?

[Fordiman]

We'll see in the lawsuit. Or not.

My guess is that the courts will dismiss, on the grounds that suing over a bad rating on Avvo is no different than trying to sue Zagat over saying your restaurant sucks.

Re:Defamatory?

[Fordiman]

In US law, only false claims of fact are actionable as slander or libel. The output of a rating algorithm can't really be considered a fact; it's the sum of opinions of the algorithm's designer as applied to a given data set.

In a perfect world...

[313373_bot]

1) Attorney sues website that assigned him a low rating.
2) Attorney loses, and his rating goes even lower.
3) ...
4) Profit!

Ok, 3 and 4 aren't really necessary.

Food for thought, or thought for food?

[camperslo]

Shooting whom? The members of the profession or the laymen? If you're going to call for someone's head, you should at least be a little more specific about whose head you want served to you on a silver platter.

Those who call lawyers useless aren't being very open minded. Lawyers may be a melamine-free source of protein, but I think my cat would prefer something a bit less bony than the head.

I wonder if the computer program has a way to rate them on flavor?

Re:Food for thought, or thought for food?

[thegnu]

Those who call lawyers useless aren't being very open minded. Lawyers may be a melamine-free source of protein, but I think my cat would prefer something a bit less bony than the head.

I had to get a lawyer because my landlord was a slimy, conniving liar. And it's turned out to be some of the best money I've ever spent, because before I was spending loads of time doing all the paperwork and covering my own ass. Now the lawyer does it. And he's a nice guy, to boot. Shocking.

Re:Food for thought, or thought for food?

[flyingfsck]

"a melamine-free source of protein" Slime has protein?

Re:Food for thought, or thought for food?

[Tychon]

I prefer pants to cover my ass, but if a lawyer does the job well enough for you and handles your paperwork, something I'll admit my pants have never done, then I may have to look into this.

Re:Food for thought, or thought for food?

[vertinox]

And it's turned out to be some of the best money I've ever spent, because before I was spending loads of time doing all the paperwork and covering my own ass. Now the lawyer does it. And he's a nice guy, to boot. Shocking.

Defense Lawyers = Good
Other Person's Lawyer = Bad
Prosecutor Lawyers = Really Bad
Corporate Lawyers = Really Evil

Re:Food for thought, or thought for food?

[Anonymous Coward]

I had to get a lawyer because my landlord was a slimy, conniving liar. You had to get a lawyer because our legal system is designed around them. If you lived in a democracy with simple laws lawyers would not be needed.

Re:Food for thought, or thought for food?

[thegnu]

You had to get a lawyer because our legal system is designed around them. If you lived in a democracy with simple laws lawyers would not be needed.

Our landlord had just purchased the place, and was still making repairs. One thing we stated very clearly was that we NEEDED the garage, because we were 7 people, and I have a home-based business. He said that the previous owner had a lot of garbage in the garage, and it would be cleaned out and we'd be provided access, then he would finish the garage. He also stated that he had already ordered the replacement parts for the broken A/C, and the panes for the broken windows. He said he would have a team come by and throw out the broken glass and things in the back yard.

We moved into the place May 28th, with prorated rent, and everyone signed the lease. The first week, the roof leaked into the downstairs kitchen. I immediately left a voicemail for my landlord. Then the upstairs shower leaked into the kitchen. The landlord said he would fix it. The front door handle was an old-style latch that was improperly mounted, and it would twist when you pressed it. We notified the landlord that it was going to break, and he said he was trying to find a vintage handle, but it was very hard to, because the door was old. Because of the moisture behind the bathroom wall (from the roof leak), the paint began to peel. We notified the landlord.

Tony finally cleaned up the garbage in the back yard.

I continued to tell him how important the garage was to us, because I also play music, and couldn't play in the house. I told him I was miserable being unable to play music, and I was losing money because my home office was in the dining room, stacked to the ceiling with stuff. My brother had his drumkit and other stuff stored in his room, as did I. The living room was stacked chest-high with stuff.

The front door handle broke in August, and we had to climb in through the window for a week until finally a handyman came out to replace it with a cheapo door handle. In that time, I had a laptop stolen. We don't live IN the ghetto, but about 2 blocks away from it. Coincidence? Sure, why not.

Mid-August, after he became increasingly accusatory and aggressive, I finally sent him a registered letter demanding $300/mo back for the garage space every month (correlating to the percentage of the total house floorspace we were being deprived of). Then he started working on the garage. In this time period, I was under a lot of stress, and began having night terrors. I was sleeping in the sun room, and I had put a latch on the door, because it didn't close properly. One night, I had a terror and thought the roof was caving in on me, so I tried to leave my room quickly, splitting the door from corner to corner.

He finally fixed the garage, fixed two of the broken windows. We notified the landlord after he finally cleaned out his garbage in the garage, and I offered to handle it for him. He looked at the stain on the ceiling in the kitchen for the third time and said, "Oh, I've never seen that before." He looked at the collapsing bathroom wall, and said, "Oh, I've never seen that before."

In November, we began being more threatening to him about the roof leak, and about the shower. We were concerned that the lease said that we were responsible for not notifying the landlord of damage, and he kept claiming he hadn't received notification. By this time, I had spent over 100 hours studying landlord-tenant law, writing letters, putting in screens, etc.

Mid-December, I sent him a letter of material non-compliance, which pursuant FL statutes states we aren't required to pay if he doesn't meet basic housing standards, doesn't follow certain laws about housing standards, or breaks the lease. He was doing all three. He sent us a letter stating basically that it was cute of us to send him a form letter, and assuring us that his lawyer did a much better job. Then he sent us a letter of eviction, retaliatory action that was again

Re:"Can a computer program be considered derogator

[dkf]

switch (person.getSkinColor()) { ... } ?

It really depends on what you're doing with it. For example, if the program is recommending what hue of skin cream (or made-to-measure suit, or something else like that) will work best with your colouration, then that program that requests that info for such purposes can hardly be inherently defamatory. On the other hand, it is most certainly possible to use a program to defame someone: it's not that hard to conceive of ways to do it (e.g. by spamming libellous statements all over the place.) But all this is programs, not algorithms; I've no idea what a defamatory algorithm might look like, and I don't think it is possible to make mathematics work that way.

As an aside, I really doubt that skin colour is going to be expressible as a simple enumeration or integer, so you won't be able to switch on it...

Re:"Can a computer program be considered derogator

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess one could blame the programmer, not the program itself. And the above statement makes perfect sense in, let's say, a program that tries to calculate the risk of person.getName()'s chance of getting a certain disease.

That's discriminatory

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS is derogatory:

int main( int argc, char **argv )
{
        cout

Am I a Good Attorney...?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

....Computer says nooo .

Re:"Can a computer program be considered derogator

[shawnap]

Uh....

switch (person.getSkinColor()) { ... } ?

Fixed:

try {
      switch (person.getSkinColor()) { ... }
}
catch( CaucasoidFeaturesException ) {
      switch (person.getReligion()) { ... }
      switch (person.getCountryOfOrigin()) { ... }
}
finally { person.warilyAccept() }

That's discriminatory (fixed)

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS is derogatory:

int main( int argc, char **argv )
{
        printf( "You're a fucking idiot!" );
        return( 0 );
} (damn slashcode can't handle C++...)

Re:That's discriminatory (fixed)

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd better be careful posting sensitive, patented Microsoft source code like that.

I'm pretty sure that's how explorer.exe starts out.

FICO

[Belial6]

Hasn't this been done to death with people suing over FICO scores?

Re:FICO

[6ULDV8]

All those suits were for naught because Isaac is Fair.

Re:"Can a computer program be considered derogator

[VertigoAce]

You seem to be using a non-standard definition of an algorithm (programs are a superset of algorithms, the primary difference being that algorithms must terminate while programs may or may not). There's no reason an algorithm can't take somebody's skin color as an input and do something based on that input.

Anyway, I think the only way an algorithm (or program) would be considered defamatory is if you didn't precisely specify what the output meant. For example, if your algorithm said white lawyers got a value of 1 and black lawyers had a value of 0. The reality is that your algorithm tells you the skin color of a particular lawyer. If you presented that information as being the quality of the lawyer (1 being good and 0 being bad), you are defaming black lawyers. So I think the website would be fine, as long as they explained exactly how their ranking was calculated and presented it as nothing more than the result of that particular calculation.

Reminds me of...

[u-bend]

one of my favorite recent (last ten years or so) Simpsons scenes:
Online Auto Diagnosis Doctor [using AOL voice]: You've got... Leprosy!

Upstairs Downstairs Lawyer on Retainer

[MSTCrow5429]

"And he questioned why Supreme Court justices and prominent lawyers score so low."

Looks like he deserves a low rating to me. Are we sure he's a real lawyer? Or does he just somehow avoid all discussions pertaining to jurisprudence?

Re:Upstairs Downstairs Lawyer on Retainer

[Firethorn]

"And he questioned why Supreme Court justices and prominent lawyers score so low."

Well, it could be the whole '1' is the best, '10' is the worst type scale, but I figure that any SC justice is probably going to score low because he or she hasn't operated as an attorney for quite a while.

As for the prominent lawyers- I can't be sure. I don't know how they rank stuff.

Thinks I'd figure on:
Years in Practice
Number of cases
Success rate
Appeal rate
Charge Rate
Any malpractice/suits against the lawyer/bar judgements.

I'm sure there'd be many factors. I'm also sure the company is still trying to tweak their ratings. For example, how would you handle rating a bargain priced lawyer that only takes easy cases? How would you rate the hugely expensive lawyer that only takes the most difficult cases(OJ Simpson), thus only has a 50% success rate?

I should be allowed to say that 'I think X is a horrible lawyer', even if everybody else disagrees with me. I'll simply get a reputation as not a good judge of lawyers.

Sympathy for the Devil?

[Ash Vince]

You gotta love the lawyers letter regarding how well he does at getting people off Sexual Misconduct charges. If I ever rape anyone in his neck of the woods I'll know just where to turn.

Re:Sympathy for the Devil?

[Anonymous Coward]

"If I ever rape anyone in his neck"

I could not go on reading after that. I just hope that never happens.

Re:Sympathy for the Devil?

[WilliamSChips]

Yeah, because nobody is ever falsely accused of rape and therefore anybody accused but not convicted is a rapist walking the streets...

Re:Sympathy for the Devil?

[Score Whore]

I guess it depends on how he wins. By getting evidence thrown out? By filing hundreds of motions until somewhere along the line a law clerk makes a mistake and he jumps on the technicality?

Until you've read some of the transcripts you don't know any more than the parent poster knows.

Re:Sympathy for the Devil?

[cpt kangarooski]

Meh. The job of a defense attorney is to get his client off the hook. Whether the client actually did it or not isn't relevant to him. That is only relevant to the other side. The last thing we need is for defense attorneys to end up working against their own clients merely because they are convinced by the prosecutor or plaintiff. If that happened, the defendant wouldn't get a fair trial. Our system is adversarial: both sides zealously fight one another. You don't want that to stop working, I assure you.

Petty

[kungfoolery]

So maybe this John Henry Browne deserves this rating? Perhaps he has a penchant for spectacularly losing cases for his clients thereby destroying the lives of hundreds of families. Or maybe not. According to my rating system, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia would get a rotten rating as well, but that's all this is, an opinion. Even though there are undoubtedly fancy-schmancy algorithms behind avvo.com's ratings, these functions and formulae are no more concrete than a set of rules and opinions developed by very human creators. Don't like what a site is saying about you? Become a better lawyer... or better yet, find out how the scoring mechanism works and play it - this has worked wonders for the likes of Harvard and Princeton (ie US News and World Report). Either way, I find Mr. Browne's threat of a lawsuit in extremely poor taste and conduct - particularly for a practitioner of law. Maybe avvo.com has a point.

Re:Petty

[Frosty Piss]

So maybe this John Henry Browne deserves this rating? Perhaps he has a penchant for spectacularly losing cases for his clients...

Brown typically represents people accused of high-profile crimes such as murder and rape. Most (all?) of his clients are guilty. Given the trash he represents, it wouldn't surprise me if he has a high loss rate. Everyone deserves a lawyer, and in Washington, when you've chopped up a few people, killed a few in an arson, done a rape or two, if you've got money, you get Brown. You still go to jail, but you spend less time there.

My online rating

[Anonymous Coward]

If this comment doesn't get modded +5 insightful, I'm going to sue Slashdot.

Re:My online rating

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference, of course, is that TFA isn't talking about a site where humans are rating other humans. This isn't www.ratemycases.com or www.hotornot.com/lawyers. A computer program rates lawyers based on a few arbitrary criteria, and this dude is suing because he thinks the rating method sucks. ... Now Slashdot's new Automatic Post Rating System had better correctly identify this as some seriously +5 Insightful material. Otherwise, I'll see you in court, CmdrTaco!

Time to go...

[Anonymous Coward]

... chase a Waaaaahmbulance!!!!

Re:Time to go...

[Fordiman]

Aww, man. If I hadn't already posted here... I've got the mod points, that'd get funny all over it.

It's called "harassment tax"

[Tablizer]

if they made it clear to viewers how their ratings are calculated, they should not be responsible for harm done.

Yes, but when you rate lawyers, they will find loopholes in loopholes and mess with you anyhow. Remember that even if they don't win a case, they can make you drive all over, pay attorneys, and hang out in court-houses to counter the charges. I once tried to start up a school bulletin board-like website, but I soon found out that the legal ramifications associated with children can be humongous.

Efficiency and lawyers don't mix. Such a site may work if they can find a way to charge enough to cover the lawyer harassment costs.

bad program but not defamatory

[belmolis]

It sounds like the rating algorithm isn't very good, but I don't see how this guy can win a suit for defamation. In US law, only false claims of FACT are actionable. If the web site stated that a lawyer had received a reprimand from the bar association when he had not, that would be defamatory. If it said he had cheated a client or bribed a juror and he had not, that would be defamatory. But saying: "This guy is a jackass" or "This guy is a poor lawyer" is not actionable because these are opinions.

I'm not sure what can be made of the use of a poor algorithm. If they disclose the algorithm and say "Here is what we get when we plug in the data we have", so long as the data is accurate and they apply the algorithm correctly, they aren't making any false claims of fact. Ethically, it seems like there should be a penalty if they persist in using an algorithm that demonstrably does not produce output that is reasonably related to what people generally take to be valid measures of lawyer quality and if they deceive people into thinking that it is valid, but I'm not sure how this can be addressed legally. I think you'd have to argue that there is an objective definition of lawyer quality of which the algorithm gives a false view. I don't know if defamation has ever been proven on such a basis.

Re:bad program but not defamatory

[Khashishi]

I suppose, if the website publishes their methodology, then the rating number becomes a statement of fact. For example, if the foo rating is claimed to be equal to 10*fraction of cases won, then posting an incorrect foo rating is a false statement.

Re:bad program but not defamatory

[cpt kangarooski]

Actually, you shouldn't rely too much on the idea that couching a statement as an opinion will protect you. The states vary on this, IIRC, but it has been rejected as a matter of First Amendment law. The real issue is whether it is defamatory and there's nothing about an opinion that prevents this.

Re:bad program but not defamatory

[belmolis]

Couching something as an opinion does not protect you if what you claim is actually a matter of fact, but a statement that really is merely opinion is indeed not actionable. That's black letter law.

Re:bad program but not defamatory

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know where you got that idea but it is totally false. I can say whatever the fuck I want to about you as long as I don't present it as fact.

If I say "In my opinion, cpt kangarooski is a homosexual who rapes little boys", that is a perfectly legal statement that you have no legal recourse over.

Re:bad program but not defamatory

[cpt kangarooski]

No, not so much. To wit:

If a speaker says, "In my opinion John Jones is a liar," he implies a knowledge of facts which lead to the conclusion that Jones told an untruth. Even if the speaker states the facts [p19] upon which he bases his opinion, if those facts are either incorrect or incomplete, or if his assessment of them is erroneous, the statement may still imply a false assertion of fact. Simply couching such statements in terms of opinion does not dispel these implications; and the statement, "In my opinion Jones is a liar," can cause as much damage to reputation as the statement, "Jones is a liar."

Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co., 497 U.S. 1, 18-19 (1990).

I will admit, however, that I ought to have said before that the issue is whether a false opinion is defamatory. For an honest-to-god idea, falsehood won't be relevant. For a statement of fact or an implication of fact which is merely pretending to be an opinion, often starting out with the words "In my opinion," falsehood is very much on the table. In my defense, it's late and I haven't had to deal with defamation law for quite some time. Still, good catch by the other poster.

Re:bad program but not defamatory

[cerberusss]

Excellent post, as always.

Let me be the first HUMAN

[Anonymous Coward]

to say that John Henry Browne is a horrible laywer and a poor excuse for a human being. I'll be awaiting your lawsuit you cockroach.

Re:Let me be the first HUMAN

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, at least post your contact information so that he can actually sue you. Otherwise, its just empty words.

I rate him a putz.

[jcr]

I hope the court slaps him good and hard. What a jackass.

-jcr

If you don't like it, show its faults

[davidwr]

If you think the algorithm is defamatory, pick it apart and show how it isn't accurate.

If the algorithm has a rule that says "if lastname=Browne then rating=rating-100" that's obviously a bogus algorithm.

Fundamentally flawed business plan.

[Angst Badger]

Let me get this right -- these AVVO folks decided it would be a good idea to base their business model on saying things about attorneys that might not be complimentary?

This is quite possibly the first time anyone thought they could make money by being sued constantly. Anyone who thought that the dot-com bubble used up all of the reservoirs of stupidity may now rest assured that fresh reserves have been discovered.

Re:Fundamentally flawed business plan.

[Torvaun]

If you don't lose, being sued a lot is a good way to keep in the public eye. The advertising dollars must be just rolling in.

i think this has been covered a million times?

[timmarhy]

doesn't reviews and rating come under FREE SPEECH? i mean just because you don't like what i have to say doesn't mean you get to shut me up.

you can only defame someone by spreading untrue rumors etc about them, but a rating? thats totally subjective and is just an opinion, which we are still allowed to have, right?

What's his credit rating?

[theFlatulentOne]

Cannot get much more arcane than the credit rating for machine scoring, and don't get me started on credit reporting inconsistencies.

No malice = no defamation

[Infonaut]

This guy is a public figure. In order to successfully claim libel, he must prove malice. An algorithm can't have malice against him in particular. This guy is out of his depth. To paraphrase an old saying in the legal profession, a lawyer who represents himself is an idiot.

Re:No malice = no defamation

[Phroggy]

This guy is a public figure. In order to successfully claim libel, he must prove malice. An algorithm can't have malice against him in particular.

Sure it can. This one probably doesn't, but if it does, he'll win his libel suit.

Of course, if the algorithm does have malice against him, it didn't get that way by accident.

Re:No malice = no defamation

[ari_j]

Read further in the article you link to. "Actual malice" doesn't mean actual malice. And "public figure" is not a given, either.

Re:No malice = no defamation

[Infonaut]

"Actual malice" doesn't mean actual malice. And "public figure" is not a given, either.

Actual malice means knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth, both of which would be very difficult to prove in this case. The fact that an algorithm handles the rating means there is a lack of human intervention, and therefore a lack of intent. Unless there were some strange sort of fraud in which the service was actually designed to screw certain individuals, proving that the algorithm somehow targets one individual is absurd.

As for him being a public figure, the lawyer is making his own public status part of his complaint. I find it difficult to believe that a judge would look at his attempt to call attention to his own standing in the community on the one hand and not think that he was holding himself out as a public figure.

Nothing is a given in the law, but I still think this guy is barking up the wrong tree and won't make it past the first motion to dismiss.

Re:No malice = no defamation

[ari_j]

I'm not sure I follow, but it sounds like you are saying that, anytime someone sues someone else for defamation, if he alleges any damage to his reputation he must be a public figure. I didn't read the man's complaint, so again I am not sure I follow your meaning here. As to malice, you say "knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth" and then "lack of intent" in the same paragraph. The only intent required in defamation is the intent to state something. If it was stated with reckless disregard for the truth, it is actionable. The real question is whether publishing the results of a computer program with insufficient attention to its input (as seems to be the case here) can constitute reckless disregard for the truth.

One can argue many ways on the X of CS and Law...

[PaulBu]

Funny you should mention the trivial case above, I was going to post the same as an example of a clearly "illegal" program, but GP made me think of something else... What if we modify it to be:

if(applicant.sex == female && will_halt(random_bytes())
|| applicant.sex == male && !will_halt(random_bytes()) rating = 0.0;

-- making the one having to prove the violation of the equal opportunity law (presumably NOT the company using the test!) also being able to violate the halting theorem!

Should we just admit (as formal logic guys did long time ago) that some things are undecidable? Is there such a notion in our law? (Actually, I think there is, long time ago I ran across an example to illustrate the presumption of innocence: like, two guys with two similar guns went to hunt in the woods, and one accidently shoots someone, it is found only later. Bullet was definitely fired from one of the guns, but it is impossible to find which one had it at the time, thus both are to be acquitted -- I'd guess lawyers thought of these issues way before logicians! :) ).

Totally irrelevant, I know...

Paul B.

Shocking

[Legion303]

These "Lawyer sues X" stories are boring. Lawyers sue people. That's all they know how to do. It's like reading a front page story about bakers baking, teachers teaching, or politicians sucking.

Re:Shocking

[rcani]

or politicians sucking

It says something about American politics that the first thing that came to mind involved Bill Clinton and an intern.

Re:Shocking

[TimberManiac]

Politicians suck in new and innovative ways every day, teachers teach the dumbest shit, and bakers bake cakes that look like cars. It's all front page material, sadly!

Attorney's solution. Litigate.

[kinglink]

Seriously, can an algorithm be biased? YES! Very much so. Imagine if we had an algorithm that rated people on a 100 point scale. If your skin color is white you get 100 points to start with, black people get 0 points. That's biased.

Does that mean the company behind the algorithm is biased? Yeah again. In this case (not necessarily Avvo's case) this algorithm is blatantly biased, trying to rate people on their skin color.

Does this mean it's illegal? Not unless the law has changed. If he wants to litigate then he needs to prove the algorithm is biased (and a few anomalies doesn't mean it's biased, it means it has a flaw) Avvo has to be biased in such a way they are making a profit over the difference. Avvo has to be deliberating trying to damage someone's career for it to even be illegal.

If the algorithm is running correctly and there's no X factor (meaningless stastical values, such as the color of the skin) then there's no crime here. They might not have a perfect algorithm but they arn't claiming it.

If the lawyer in question wanted to fix this correctly, he should bring this to the attention of the site, point out numerous cases of people being graded too harshly and then publicize the data to the public if need be. From the sound of it, there's little to no proof except some lawyers feeling they are being treated unfairly. From the sound of it, that's sour grapes, there's no defamation.

Just because an algorithm is poorly designed it doesn't mean it's crap, errors happen even with great algorithm's first iterations. There's still a burden of proof on the lawyer and I'm not hearing any real proof yet.

Credit Ratings

[llthomps]

So, if this attorney wins his lawsuit - does that mean I can sue FICO for my a credit rating?

Computers Don't Design Algorithms, People Do

[cmholm]

And people use them too, frequently without having any idea of whether the algorithm is processing given input the way they're thinking it is... or having any idea what the inputs are. Labor saving devices are great, but it's nice to have an idea of just what laborious action one is saved from performing, otherwise a monkey can do your job. Hear me, HR rep?

Excellent idea, but....

[Livius]

I suspect this lawyer is upset purely because the website is empowering consumers with the means to know whether or not their lawyer is competent and their fees are justified.

So the website is a useful service.

But there are legitimate, serious concerns about how the rankings are calculated. Law is a self-governing profession, and it's not clear that Avvo is using criteria that assess lawyers in terms that would lead to customers making the best decisions. Most external criteria, like fees or convictions, are not necessarily related to job performance.

Re:One can argue many ways on the X of CS and Law.

[Jotaigna]

mmh i dont think so. Regardless of the outcome of the haltin theorem you have: A = appplicant.sex B = will_halt(random_bytes()) then your logical statement is AB + A!B --> rating =0 A(B + !B) --> rating =0 and since (B + !B)== 1 (always, regarding of the validity of the statement B) A --> rating =0 which is the original post.

Is there a reason for a poor rating?

[Anonymous Coward]

"This lawyer has been sanctioned by a state disciplinary authority." That says all that needs to be said: the rating was based on demonstable fact!

Result

[Anonymous Coward]

$ gcc file.cc
/tmp/ccmk8oR4.o:(.eh_frame+0x12): undefined reference to `__gxx_personality_v0' collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

Re:Result

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah! That'll show him!

Re:One can argue many ways on the X of CS and Law.

[PaulBu]

Note that there are two calls to random_bytes(), thus, depending of the actual implementation of will_halt(), it if actually gets into the infinite loop when it can not decide (and test would have to be aborted) the code above gives some (50% or 25%?) preference to females over males (assuming that the halting theorem is true, of course, and there is 50% chance of running into a non-halting program, which is most likely untrue!). In other words, there are two uncorrelated B and B' and one has to make other assumptions!

Paul B.

GIGO

[TapeCutter]

"programs are a superset of algorithms, the primary difference being that algorithms must terminate while programs may or may not"

Program = Algorithm + Data. - Knuth.

"if you didn't precisely specify what the output meant"

If you expand that to include input, you will have described what is otherwise known as - GIGO.

BTW: A subjective judgement as to wether the "garbage" output by a particular program is/isn't defamatory is outside the realm of computer science.

Re:GIGO

[dkf]

A subjective judgement as to wether the "garbage" output by a particular program is/isn't defamatory is outside the realm of computer science.

It might be possible (if horribly difficult) to construct a computerized semantic model of what is or isn't defamatory, and there is a field within CS that focusses on such things (OK, in practice they do more work on stuff like understanding biology, leading to things like bioinformatics). Given such a model, it would then be possible to work out whether the computations done by a particular algorithm are potentially defamatory given some particular dataset, assuming anyone gives any credence to the results of the algorithm at all.

Re:GIGO

[TapeCutter]

Putting on my pedantic hat I am inclined to respond with: AFAIK nobody has managed to get a computer to make a subjective judgement

However I do agree/concede that an AI program or "expert system" could be trained to determine if something was defamatory in the same way they can be trained to diagnose disease. After all the defamation laws are supposedly a set of non-contradictory objective statements.

In keeping with the /. tradition I did not RTFA, the main point of my post was to stop the GP from unintentionally spreading nonesense by pointing him to the man who wrote one of the gospels of CS.

Medical Expert Systems

[MrHatken]

I recall a story about a medical expert system, related to me by the famous AI researcher Donald Michie (from the UK), that was designed to determine whether a patient with particular heart problems needed heart surgery or not. The expert system was proved to do a better job at predicting when heart surgery would increase the quality of the outcome (life) for the patient than specialists doctors (cardiologists?).

IIRC, the hospital chose not to use the system for fear of litigation when the expert systems diagnosis was wrong (which it no doubt would be in a lot of cases, just like the human's would be). Personally, I would - if I was the litigious type - probably sue if the hospital didn't use the method proven to be the most effective (in this case the expert system).

Of course, one could suggest a hybrid system where the specialist considers the output of the expert system, but I am not so sure this really solves the problem.

Cheers,
Ashley.

--
Ashley Aitken
Perth, Western Australia
mrhatken at mac dot com

Re: Your opinion - wrong.

[fyngyrz]

How about instead you abbreviate it to the supreme court is ruling in a way that is forbidden, many times over, by the constitution, without supporting amendment, and so they are operating illegally and contrary to their charter, instead? Because if you make that change, you'll enjoy the luxury of actually being accurate. If that's of interest to you.

Statistical reality.

[Mal-2]

No matter what your profession, half of your colleagues are below average. That could include you. But in most professions, you don't have to be the best, or even close to the best, to be better than an unknown quantity. This is why those dim bulbs still surround you.

You know how dumb the average guy is? Well, by definition, half of them are even dumber than that! -- J.R. "Bob" Dobbs

Mal-2

Re:Statistical reality.

[kasperd]

half of your colleagues are below average.

Only if the median happens to be identical to the average, which is by no means guaranteed. My guess is the average is higher than the median. There will be a few very briliant people to pull up the average. There could also be a few very stupid people to pull down the average, but they won't have this profession. So I guess the majority is just a bit below average.

Re:Statistical reality.

[mbstone]

In the legal profession, it is said that the "A" students become law professors; the "B" students become judges; and the "C" students make all the money.

IANAL, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

This sort of thing probably falls under "fair comment" and is not considered defamatory. After all, if you perform a service then you are inviting comments/ratings based on that service -- positive or otherwise.

How to do ratings right

[Animats]

We've had to face a similar problem as Avvo with SiteTruth, which rates web sites. The answer seems to have two parts - integrity and transparency. This means looking at information that comes from reliable sources other than the thing being rated, and showing the information from which the ranking is derived.

Avvo is trying to do this. Avvo's information comes partly from external sources, like legal directories and records of disciplinary actions. That's less game-able than traditional web search. And Avvo shows that information, so they have transparency.

Google is slowly coming around to this point of view. Originally, Google rankings were opaque, but now they've put in various "Webmaster Console" features to show some of the information that drives their algorithm.

Google faces the problem that some of their metrics for detecting junk web sites are heuristic, and rely on "security through obscurity". They don't want to say exactly how obscure text can be before it's considered "hidden text", or exactly what they consider a "link farm", or they'll be spammed right up to the allowed limit. So they can't have full transparency. They're inherently limited by the approach of primarily looking at the web site itself, which the site operator can change freely, to rate the site.

Google does look at some external non-Web information, but mostly things like how long a domain has been registered.

Avvo has user ratings of lawyers, which probably aren't that useful. User ratings are most valuable when the universe of raters is much larger than the number of things being rated. So it's good for major movies, where there are tens of new movies and millions of fans, marginal for hotels, and weak for businesses few people have heard of. There aren't enough clients per lawyer to get a statistically valid result, and it's too easy to game when the number of raters is small.

Re:How to do ratings right

[firewood]

Google faces the problem that some of their metrics for detecting junk web sites are heuristic, and rely on "security through obscurity". They don't want to say exactly how obscure text can be before it's considered "hidden text", or exactly what they consider a "link farm", or they'll be spammed right up to the allowed limit. So they can't have full transparency. They're inherently limited by the approach of primarily looking at the web site itself, which the site operator can change freely, to rate the site.

They can solve the problem of transparency while preventing gaming the system by using randomized metrics for setting their heuristic limits. Have a trusted source of random numbers (send a lavarand setup to their CPA) generate and publish those numbers, but publish them a few days too late for anyone to game the system using knowledge of the current heuristic parameters.

Re:One can argue many ways on the X of CS and Law.

[Lehk228]

actually they could just make the program run N times with N being sufficiently large, such as 5000 times, and show that statistically the program created a bias against women.

Huh?

[PaulBu]

We are talking about the Law here, not statistics!

If it is statistically proven that white guys rape black girls significantly more often, or asian girls murder russian ones significantly more often (tried to put as many random inversions as I could, and, I'd guess, still failed to satisfy the PC crowd :) ) -- it should (in theory) have no weight on whether this or that *actual* violation took place...

But good try, next one, please! :)

Paul B.

Re:Huh?

[Lehk228]

sorry, you lose.

things which have the effect of discrimination are considered discriminatory.

Re:Huh?

[PaulBu]

Such as "The Great Anti-Discrimination Act"? Well, I'd have to agree with you then, except for the "considered" part -- it should be dropped, OK? :)

Paul B.

Re:One can argue many ways on the X of CS and Law.

[Jotaigna]

good point, so reevaluating:
B is random, so 50% true
B' is random, so 50% true
A(B + B') is then true 75% of times
B | B' |output
----------------
0 | 0 | 0
1 | 0 | 1
0 | 1 | 1
1 | 1 | 1

so its not as i said initially, but still pretty high.

Bzzt! Wrong! :)

[PaulBu]

B is random, so 50% true

Nope, it is 50% true, and the other 50% *undecided*, as in, if first call to will_halt() actually had to work indefinitely to decide one has to introduce other means, like terminating the thread (which might automatically assign 1 to admission probability, or something! :)

Paul B.

More on parent's sig

[mbstone]

Parent's sig: When members of a profession start referring to non-members as "laymen," it's time to start shooting them.

mbstone's corollary: When members of a profession start referring to non-members as "marks," a member who shoots a non-member is from then on known as a "marksman."

Re:"Can a computer program be considered derogator

[Anonymous Coward]

if (person.religion() == IslamicFundamentalist) {
        try {
                person.reasonWith();
        } catch (Bomb) {
                abort();
        }
}

Posting anonymously for obvious reasons...

Trusting the Secret Formula

[Doc Ruby]

The article and the rating site's policy defense announcement don't say whether the rating formula is published. If it were, that should be proof against any attack except that their formula is unfair/inaccurate/mispopulated or not applied correctly. If those attacks were also published, then consumers could judge for themselves whether they trust the ratings. And lawyers could request specific changes when arguing they're unfair.

If the formula is secret, then lawyers are arguing with an unknown target. They hate that, and will use all kinds of lawyer tricks and tools that have nothing to do with fairness. But consumers have no reason to trust the ratings, except maybe some anecdotal evidence.

Open source is essential to people communicating with each other. The computer and software are just the medium. If the medium is opaque, people will have to get drastic just to be seen through it.

What I Love about this story

[mikep.maine]

Thank you Mr Attorney. I never knew Avvo existed. Now I do. It's free publicity like this that helps struggling startups. Mo money, mo money, mo money, ...

What's next?

[Causemos]

A company suing Consumer Reports over user feedback on a product?

A political candidate suing a survey company over his election ranking?

Bush suing CBS News over his presidential approval rating?

Browne in context

[mschuyler]

John Henry Browne is a highly visible and controversial defense attorney in the Seattle area. He specializes in high-profile cases. The Pang case involved Martin Pang who torched his mother's food warehouse where several firemen were killed. He fled to South America where he was caught and extradited back to the US. He was an attorney for Ted Bundy, who told him, "I want to be a good person. I'm just not." Browne reported that conversation in the newspaper after Bundy was executed. He is constantly in the newspaper. If it's something big and spectacular, you can expect to see Browne's name associated with it. I have been told that the Mafia recommends him highly. In my opinion, Browne does not shy away from any publicity and that this is an example of creating some.

Re:"Can a computer program be considered derogator

[dkf]

You seem to be using a non-standard definition of an algorithm (programs are a superset of algorithms, the primary difference being that algorithms must terminate while programs may or may not).

That's not how it was taught to me. I interpret "algorithm" to mean a set of step-by-step instructions for carrying out some computation. There's no need for the instructions to be machine-understandable, as they are essentially mathematical entities. Programs use algorithms (often by composing more than one together) to solve particular tasks on particular datasets. Thus, quicksort is an algorithm (that happens to be typically characterized as a function call for ease of calling) but the fact that you could instruct it to sort a set of people by skin colour does not make quicksort itself defamatory - it just sorts things, any things - it's the use which you put it to which problematic. (Interestingly, neither is an algorithm to go from a skin colour to a score itself inherently defamatory, but it could be used by someone intent on mischief for defamatory purposes. But in that case the fault is not with the algorithm but rather the use of it.)

oops

[thegnu]

in the 7th paragraph, the second sentence should read

. We notified the landlord of the broken door after he finally cleaned out his garbage in the garage, and I offered to handle it for him.

The wrong question is being asked.

[stonecypher]

Can a computer program be considered defamatory?

No, but publishing its results very easily could be. Suppose for example I write a piece of software that uses characteristics of handwriting to identify rapists, and then publish the results. Don't laugh - this has actually been attempted, both with handwriting and with other things (another personal favorite was the attempt to use phrenology to identify murderers.) The thing is, people were actually put in jail as rapists based on handwriting characteristics (this is in late 18th century England, well after trepanning was out of favor, but presumably prior to common sense.)

Now, if I tried this today - let's say, since CmdrTaco is the butt of every slashdot joke that it indicates him based on the shape of his capital "Q" - then fine. I'd be a moron if I believed it, but no harm done.

Now, let's say I start a business, and start preaching my "findings" to others. Suddenly, I'm calling other people rapists in public, with no apparent evidence. Yes, I realize that I've chosen a relatively incindiary example, but the fact of the matter is that sites like this cost businesses money and people reputations. If I called someone a rapist in public based on their handwriting, they would be well within their rights to demand an explanation, and if there was no actual science behind it, they'd be well within their rights to sue for (depending on how I went about it) either slander or libel.

Is this different? Yes, the company believes in its mystic algorithm, but who cares? People believed in handwriting and phrenology as criminological tools once, too. This company really doesn't have the ethical right to go around ranking people based on some random mumbo jumbo they cooked up in their basement one evening.

It turns out that just like you have to have a license to give medical or legal advice, you also have to have a license to discuss the competence of doctors or lawyers. In this culture, you may not speak badly in public of a professional's practice if you don't have documentation of knowing what the hell you're talking about. You can say he doesn't show up for appointments or she doesn't remember anyone's name, or he's rude or she always seems distracted, or whatever - but you can't say they're a bad doctor unless you're a doctor too.

Why should this website be any different? They're not lawyers, and it wouldn't be legal if they were /just/ talking about the law firm. Why should it be legal if the protected professionals are just in a broader buckshot aim?

In our legal system, Avvo is officially claiming to have expertise they don't. I know they don't have it because they don't have enough staff to cover all the ground they ranked. I'm all for algorithmic development, but the story changes when you start publishing about other people. At that point, it's not just computer science anymore; at that point it's business, and business has rules that the internet would think unfair.

Frankly, I hope Avvo gets sued so far into the ground that they come out the other side.

It's Martindale-Hubbell who'll sue them

[mbstone]

"Avvo" is a riff on the "AV" rating that Martindale-Hubbell, law directory publishers, issues to what it regards as top-grade lawyers (usually big-firm corporate lawyers).

reminds me of google adsense

[Anonymous Coward]

A few months ago, Google adsense seems to sometimes fail to figure out what the subject matter of a page is, and would 'default' to a combination of Gay ad's and Christan ads, (which brought me many hours of laughter). But this would happen on peoples profile pages, and we got a good amount of complaints sent in to us, people upset because 'gay' ads where showing up in their profile pages, and insisting we remove them.

    So would it have been possible for someone to sue us because they where offended because googles adsense served up gay related ads? (we even contacted google on the matter, it took several months, but I noticed it stopped now, and seems to default to wedding and maternity related stuff now)

Not really

[Moraelin]

It's not really that simple. If you choose to publish something ammounting to "lawyer X is a bad lawyer, stay away from him", then you better have some damn solid evidence to base that on, or it's libel. Just saying "the algorithm did it" isn't an excuse. If you have a bad algorithm, then it would have been your responsibility to check it first. It's that simple, really.

An algorithm can be as bogus as you want it to. You can even code it to explicitly discriminate against someone, but even an impartially bogus algorithm is still bogus. E.g., try the following:

public class Numerology {
    public static int grade(String name) {
        int result = 0;
        for (int i = 0; i < name.length(); i++) {
            result += name.charAt(i);
        }
        return result % 5 + 1;
    }
 
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println(args[0]);
    }
}

It says "Firethorn" scores only 1 on a 1 to 5 stars scale, so he must be a not too bright guy. Scrapping the bottom of the barrel, folks. Better stay away from whatever services he offers, or from taking him seriously on Slashdot. On the other hand "Moraelin" scores 4 out of 5, which isn't all that bad. (Don't take it personally, BTW, it's just an example of what a bogus algorithm can do.)

Now you may say, "wtf, who in their right mind hires an employee or a lawyer based on numerology?", but:

A) you'd be wrong. Some companies use just that to thin the pool of candidates, and

B) Much more importantly, the damage is done if I don't tell anyone what's really the algorithm there. I could put it up on some resume search site as the grade I'm assigning to each candidate. In effect, I'd be telling people "don't take this guy", but not giving them enough info as to what the criteria are, and if they even aggree with those criteria. They could imagine that it's some clever algorithm that searched the CV and the previous employers' opinions, when it's just a bogus piece of random crap.

Which, if I understand right, is basically what these guys are doing. They're giving grades to some people, but noone knows what the criteria are, what is the data, and what corrections to ask for if you don't aggree with that grade. But, hey, it's done by a computer, so it must be right. Or at least it must absolve them of all responsibility.

And I just don't see it that way. If you're choosing to grade people for your own use it's ok, you're only depriving yourself of a valuable employee or contractor. But the moment you post it online and attack their reputation with it, you damn better have all the facts available, be damn sure of your algorithm, and offer plenty of possibilities for them to challenge the inaccuracies in that data. If not, it's just high-tech libel, nothing more.

Since you compare it to those: Independent reviews tend to go on at length as to what problems they found to base that grade on. And in fact that's the actual information in that review, not the score. You can't base a purchase 100% on the score, unless you have absolutely no personality of your own, or you already know that your taste and preferences 100% match those of the reviewer. The way a sane person peruses them is to look at the pros and cons in a reviews, and draw their own conclusion, based on their own list of priorities.

E.g., even if a reviewer gave an LCD TV a lower score because, say, the screen is not glossy and shiny, I can think the exact opposite "well, actually I've had enough of mirror LCDs that reflect everything behind me. I'll get that one."

But if some reviewer chose to write nothing except the score, then, yes, they'd open themselves to exactly this kind of lawsuit.

Re:Not really

[Firethorn]

From my limited review, the site does make it's information available, thought the alogorithm is probably both somewhat confidential(like credit ratings), and currently under modification. I ended up punching in 90210, none of the zip codes I've actually lived in worked. For the heck of it I checked out the bankruptcy lawyers.

Since you compare it to those: Independent reviews tend to go on at length as to what problems they found to base that grade on. And in fact that's the actual information in that review, not the score. You can't base a purchase 100% on the score, unless you have absolutely no personality of your own, or you already know that your taste and preferences 100% match those of the reviewer. The way a sane person peruses them is to look at the pros and cons in a reviews, and draw their own conclusion, based on their own list of priorities.

Like somebody else said - it looks like you start at a 5, then years of practice increase your score, plus any recognitions/awards, minus a hefty amount for disciplinary actions. For example, Terrence Leroy Butler gets a 4 despite 23 years of practice(disp action). Jenny Ahn gets a 5.8 for 3 years of practice. One guy gets a 10 despite only 10 years of practice - but his record has awards left and right.

I can see them keeping the exact details of the rating system confidential because then you'd have people gaming the system even more - look at the trouble google has.

Then there's the problem that the site hasn't been up long enough to get client/peer reviews going good, though I'd take those with a grain of salt for a while - too easy for a lawyer to call his buddies up and get good reviews.

The guy can hardly expect a 10 - he DID have a disciplinary action taken against him. It says it right on Avvo's site. As for records correction - I'm pretty sure Avvo pulled their info from public records, which means that anybody finding incorrect information might find a call to the bar association more urgent.

I still think that the guy has a very weak case - Everybody's entitled to their opinion, which the alogorithm expresses in a non-personal way. Whining about 'I don't think that a disp. action should affect their opinion that bad' doesn't help. They're allowed to distrust lawyers with disp. actions. Heck, they're allowed to distrust lawyers in general.

As long as they aren't publishing lies, it's not libel. Opinions and facts can be published far and wide with no repercussions. Even a falsehood is ok, as long as at the time of publishing it they believed it to be true. IE I did a data pull from state records. Upon intensive review, some errors were reveiled, but they came from state data. I didn't deliberately finger John Doe - the records were incorrect.

I agree, just as with credit ratings, errors should be fixed when correct information is receieved and verified to a trust level higher than original source(otherwise you'd have incorrect 'corrections' pouring in).

Erata

[Moraelin]

Erk, that should be:

System.out.println(grade(args[0]));