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.
It's a followup to a previous article featured on Slashdot, showing how the Streisand effect is strong enough to shut down a health care practice.
Who knows what's up with this dentist. But the company who provides the form paperwork is really the people that the lawyers should be going after. D. Makhnevich is only one of many many who use this company's services / products.
Also this points out why I never pay much attention to Yelp: This dentist is rightfully getting a lot of heat over this business, but most of the "opinions" about her on Yelp are by people who have almost certainly never used her services. This is how it goes when businesses get bad publicity, everyone runs to trash them on Yelp regardless of if they have ever done business with whoever is the target.
There are a number of other sites that specialize in doctor ratings from patient that have a significantly different score for this clown.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
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?
In order to be a valid contract, there has to be "consideration" on both sides.
What is the "consideration" given to the patient, in exchange for giving up copyright? Clearly it isn't dentistry, since that could be had elsewhere without the requirement of waiving copyright.
So what did Makhnevich give patients in exchange for that? If nothing, then there is no contract.
I suppose it's remotely possible that the patients were trading their copyright for dentistry, but that seems a pretty thin argument.
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).
"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.
Surely you don't think poor children in general are equally well raised. It has not to do with their qualities as humans, it's simply much more difficult. And so as a group they will be less well raised.
Before you judge others you should learn English. 'Pretence' is English for the word that Americans write as 'pretense'.
Actually, 'Pretence' is the screwed up spelling Great Britain uses for the word 'pretense'.
Yes, the English people have the screwed up version of the English language and the Americans have it completely right, as always, and non-Americans aren't allowed to use the English version.
Land of the free
Sounds better than the land of unbalanced malloc, don't you think?
Ezekiel 23:20
I live in India. Here some people are still trapped in superstitious beliefs and practices. There's spiritual guide named as Nirmal Baba, I wrote a post against him on my blog highlighting the ways he was using to corrupt the minds of the common people. The post was written one year ago. After that I had promoted it for a while, did some SEO and stuff. And then it faded away as Nirmal Baba obscured from public view because the media was targeting him one year ago. Then slowly the channels started shutting their mouths. His show " The third eye of Nirmal Baba" started re-airing on all the news channels in the morning slot as was earlier. I realized that things can't be changed. Nirmal Baba is a millionaire. He shut those people up. Sued everyone writing against him and then came my turn. I was sent a legal notice for writing against him, here's the link of the legal notice to read online : http://goo.gl/rWOvbn I talked to a lawyer. I was assured that if matters go into court, I would win. But I was also made alert that the potential harassment by followers of the Baba could make my life a nightmare. I DELETED THAT BLOG POST. (Here's the original html files : http://goo.gl/vm2Ske )And that's the price I had to pay. Forget morals and standing up against wrong, Same as here, the dentist is misusing the legal powers to shut people up from expressing what they truly feel. This is not what happens in a democracy! And if the people aren't free to post on the internet, then we are surely entering a despotic age!
The much less popular time lord.
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
I imagine this class action lawsuit is not the reason she is on the run. I would think that if what Lee said was true, and she was charging insurance companies $4000 for a $200 job, she has bigger problems.
All speculation, but it seems to me this is a "take the money and run before I get discovered for widespread multimillion dollar insurance fraud" disappearing act rather than a "OMG a civil law suit! Run!" disappearing act.
Again, with the "blame Bush" ... oh wait .. never mind ;)
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.