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Dentist Who Used Copyright To Silence Her Patients Drops Out of Sight

Posted by timothy on from the my-current-dentist-has-been-nice-so-far dept.

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.

5 of 260 comments (clear)

  1. What's most surprising about this story. by BitterOak · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

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    1. Re:What's most surprising about this story. by Hans+Lehmann · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Most patients, when walking into the office of a new medical provider, are given a stack of forms to sign by a harried receptionist who expects them to just sign the paperwork and hand it back. Few people actually read them.

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    2. Re:What's most surprising about this story. by KingMotley · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I always do. I read absolutely everything that I sign, because there are too many unscrupulous people out there. You never know what bullshit is in those contracts, and I've even refused to sign some, and some they've changed or removed clauses

    3. Re:What's most surprising about this story. by dcollins · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "What's most surprising about this story to me is that any patients would sign such a contract."

      Read the Ars Technica piece by the writer who tried to say "no" to such a contract. In short: he gets booted out the door. Now imagine you're in pain and maybe scared about a possible medical emergency (as the patient in the lawsuit here was). Situations like that is why oversight of a time-critical service like this is needed.

      http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/05/all-your-reviews-are-belong-to-us-medical-justice-vs-patient-free-speech/

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  2. Re:still no match for Orly Taitz by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "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?

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