Slashdot Mirror
Dentist Who Used Copyright To Silence Her Patients Drops Out of Sight
According to a report at Ars Technica, a dentist named Stacy Makhnevich, who billed herself as "the Classical Singer Dentist of New York," threatened patients who wrote bad Yelp reviews with lawsuits, along the same lines as the online dental damage-control outlined in a different Ars story in 2011. This time, though, there's something even stranger than bargaining with patients to forgo criticism: when a patient defied that demand by describing his experience in negative terms on Yelp, Makhnevich followed up on the threat by seeking a takedown order based on copyright (putatively signed over to her for any criticism that patients might write, post-visit) — then disappeared entirely when lawyers for patient Robert Lee filed a class-action lawsuit challenging the validity of the agreement.
What's most surprising about this story to me is that any patients would sign such a contract. According to the article, it is supposedly to increase privacy protections for the patient, but how many dentists go around spilling the beans about their patients' teeth? And are your tooth secrets that serious that you'd be willing to sign over copyright of your internet posts so your dentist will keep them? Are you really that afraid your friends will find out you don't floss regularly?
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
I'm an asshole because I suggest that content of character is more important than (mostly innate) qualities like intelligence and appearance?
I stand by what I said: values are more important than skills. A good person is better than a clever or a sexy person.
I have found kids to judge people only based on "niceness" too, until the adult competitive world bashes into their head that they must look at less important things. Hormones do make people care about physical appearance, but the particularly physical qualities people find attractive vary tremendously except when society forces particular obsessions (e.g. in the US breasts are a huge taboo therefore big breasts are a Thing in the US, whereas in Europe people fixate much less on them).
Still, I feel sorry for small businesses today -- are there any restaurants whose online listings aren't choking with "gross" and "I'll never go there again!"
The Better Business Bureau has a mechanism to take complaints and give the business a way to respond and resolve the issues. All this also assumes the complaints are real and not just made up derogatory astroturfing online of competitors.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Dentistry is one of the "social mobility" professions. Like nursing. Poor people trying to make it rich, while lacking the values held by rich people who were brought up properly. Dentists also have a very high suicide rate. Go figure.
"values held by rich people who were brought up properly"... Like, knowing how to scam properly to not get caught, or at least get bailed out by taxpayer money? Or what exactly do you mean?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.