Court Rules Against Online Anonymity

cstacy writes "The Virginia Court of Appeals has ruled (PDF) that people leaving negative feedback for a carpet cleaning service are not allowed to remain anonymous. Yelp must unmask seven critics to the carpet cleaner, who feels that they might not even be real customers."

Comments

Appropriate Supreme Court Quote

[Chris Mattern]

"Anonymous pamphlets, leaflets, brochures and even books
have played an important role in the progress of mankind.
Persecuted groups and sects from time to time throughout
history have been able to criticize the oppressive practices
and laws either anonymously or not at all... It is plain
that anonymity has sometimes been assumed for the most
constructive purposes."

    --Hugo Black, Tally v. California, 1960

Re:Appropriate Supreme Court Quote

[k6mfw]

that was back in 20th century when the US had a Constitution and three branches of govt for checks and balances.

Re:Appropriate Supreme Court Quote

[Anonymous Coward]

Libel has never been a constitutional right. If someone makes a libelous statement, hiding behind anonymity, then the other party is free to investigate who made the statement. No company's terms of service can override the law.

Re:Appropriate Supreme Court Quote

[SJHillman]

"No company's terms of service can override the law"

I see you're new here. Welcome to America!

Re:Appropriate Supreme Court Quote

[Entropius]

Just because thing A used to be better doesn't mean that thing B used to be better too. Can't we look at the past and say "This was good, but that was bad"?

Re:Appropriate Supreme Court Quote

[Wordplay]

"Constitutionality? Yes, but the 20th Century also had Chewbacca. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it; that does not make sense!"

We're better in some ways now...and a lot worse in others. At least then, when a governmental abuse came to light it tended to actually cause an effect. Nowadays, it's just blown off as business as usual.

Re:Appropriate Supreme Court Quote

[naasking]

That quote refers to anonymity from the government. It's not clear that anonymity whem commenting on corprations or people have the same protections due to libel laws.

Re:Appropriate Supreme Court Quote

[DRJlaw]

"Generally, a Yelp review is entitled to First Amendment protection because it is a
person's opinion about a business that they patronized. See Tharpe, 285 Va. at 481, 737 S.E.2d
at 893. But this general protection relies upon an underlying assumption of fact: that the reviewer
was a customer of the specific company and he posted his review based on his personal
experience with the business. If this underlying assumption of fact proves false, in that the
reviewer was never a customer of the business, then the review is not an opinion; instead, the
review is based on a false statement of fact -- that the reviewer is writing his review based on
personal experience. And "'there is no constitutional value in false statements of fact.'" Id.
(quoting Gertz, 418 U.S. at 340).

Here, Hadeed attached sufficient evidence to its subpoena duces tecum indicating that it
made a thorough review of its customer database to determine whether all of the Yelp reviews
were written by actual customers. After making such a review, Hadeed discovered that it could
not match the seven Doe defendants' reviews with actual customers in its database. Thus, the
evidence presented by Hadeed was sufficient to show that the reviews are or may be defamatory,
if not written by actual customers of Hadeed. Moreover, Hadeed sought the subpoena duces
tecum under the legitimate, good faith belief that the Doe defendants were not former customers,
and, therefore, their reviews were defamatory."

    -- William G. Petty, this case. 2014.

Re:Appropriate Supreme Court Quote

[CppDeveloper]

I had the same initial reaction then I actually read the article...

It is not as clear cut as it seems. The man is able to map most commenters to identified customers but the seven identified in the suit are exceptions. His contention is that they are NOT customers and are making fraudulent statements bringing it under libel law instead of free speach. Apparently he was able to provide convincing evidence to the judge.

Re:Appropriate Supreme Court Quote

[plover]

How dare you question the legitimacy of my spokesperson in a lab coat? I'll have you know that was a Genuine Lab Coat. Genuine.

Re:Appropriate Supreme Court Quote

[Unordained]

Whether the reviews are true or not may very well depend on the identity of the supposed reviewer. If it's in the form of "they destroyed my carpet", the cleaning service could either try to prove that this has not happened to any customers ever, or that this review did not come from a customer to whom it actually happened. If it's not a real customer, then it's probably a competitor, and at that point, it's very much libel -- purposefully spreading lies for the purpose of damaging someone else's reputation. Reviews like this really do matter to a small business. If they reveal the identities and discover it was a real customer and a real experience, there's nothing legally they could do to remove it, because it wouldn't be libel, and would be protected. But they also can't do anything about it now, until they prove it's false, which requires them to reveal identities.

The alternate solution might be for all review systems to say "this review is anonymous [better: not a verified identity], so the person being reviewed really has no opportunity to face his accuser, so you should take this with a really big grain of salt". And maybe not even count it in the averaged star-rating. And then you've just killed their business model, because the identity/registration stuff is such a hurdle.

Re:Appropriate Supreme Court Quote

[naughtynaughty]

There is no evidence that they were not customers, he simply claimed he was not able to identify them as customers. As someone who was once sued in Texas by a scummy publicly traded company for my alleged to be defamatory comments I posted online about their pumped up and soon to collapse revenue, I can assure you that companies can and do lie in their assertions to the court. In my case the intent, plain as simple, was to stifle public discussion of the company so investors could continue to be bamboozled by glowing press releases. The case was tossed out of court because they had no jurisdiction over me in Texas so we didn't get to the point of having to prove it was a SLAAP suit with no substance. And the company's stock soon collapsed as it became obvious that they were in fact exactly what I and others were asserting that they were. While I am sympathetic to a company being defamed online, I think we need to give great deference to the right of people to anonymously speak out. There is no even playing field in most cases, companies tend to have more money than the average consumer and if criticism is met with a lawsuit it serves to chill speech to a substantial degree.

Re:Appropriate Supreme Court Quote

[Charliemopps]

Ok, lets check them out then:
C- with the BBB
34 complaints, 2 unresolved
http://www.bbb.org/washington-dc-eastern-pa/business-reviews/carpet-and-rug-cleaners/hadeed-carpet-cleaning-inc-in-alexandria-va-9331/

Here's one of their commercials, seemingly libeling every other carpet cleaner in the area:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jmr3F2bmyyc

Here's some fake customers, and no "Paid actors" warning:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24KaJugEcSE

So again, if they can lie about how good they are, lie about how bad everyone else is, then why can't other people lie about how bad they are?

I think Libelous speech should be protected, despite the supreme courts previous rulings.

Re:Appropriate Supreme Court Quote

[Bacon Bits]

Defamation laws, as far as I see, only cover the negatives, not the positives.

Defamation covers the negatives. Fraud and false advertising covers the positives. If testimonials or endorsements are made then they are regulated. You can't legally advertise a false testimonial.

And thus ends Yelp.

[Kenja]

Since the whole point is to give unbiased feed back and the chance of repercussions by definition creates a bias, that's more or less the end of that.

Re:And thus ends Yelp.

[i kan reed]

Don't worry, you can still find information about businesses that have gone under, details about restaurants including everything but their hours and prices, and reviews marked "most helpful" consisting solely of the phrase "I liked it"

Re:And thus ends Yelp.

[wiredlogic]

The whole point of Yelp is to collect negative reviews so they can get paid to remove them.

Re:And thus ends Yelp.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't support that enough. Here in Germany, they bought a local competitor, and suddenly all the positive reviews disappeared unless you pay for an "advertisement package".

Re:And thus ends Yelp.

[mythosaz]

There's pretty much four types of reviewers on Yelp, in pretty much this order or volume:

1) The semi-professional Yelp reviewer. He's writing yelp reviews for every last thing he does.
2) Shills, inflating their companies and friends, and leaving crap for competitors.
3) Guys who got a toenail in their lunch who made an account to complain.
A distant 4) People who had a great meal who felt a need to share.

If you know this, you can still read between the lines and make informed reviews.

Waiting to review

[MiniMike]

Is there a place on Yelp to review the Virginia Court of Appeals?

Re:Waiting to review

[plover]

+++++ 5 bars, will no doubt be asked to stay again.

I can kind of see it

[Chirs]

If I'm a small business owner, I don't want my competitors to be submitting fake negative reviews against me.

It might make sense to have both named and anonymous reviews, with the anonymous ones grouped separately. Then the viewer can decide which ones to look at.

Re:I can kind of see it

[schneidafunk]

I agree. I see a lot of people talking about free speech and quoting the constitution, but ignoring libel & defamation. Being able to speak anonymously as a whistleblower or protester is one thing; ruining the reputation of a person or business with falsehoods is quite another.

Chicken Sh*ts

[Anonymous Coward]

Have the balls to stand behind your comments. If you wouldn't say it in front of a crowd, don't say it. Whomever said the Internet was anonymous has no idea what the start of the Internet was like - with email directly to your computer.

Re:Chicken Sh*ts

[Rik Sweeney]

Oh, the irony!

Re:The door swings both ways

[Anonymous Coward]

4/5 - Great!

Wonderful hotel, friendly staff and nice clean room. Would visit again!
7/4/01

5/5 - Enjoyed thoroughly

Breakfast was delivered to my room at no extra cost, that's what I call service!
12/06/01

1/5 - Noisy surroundings

Was trying to have a lie in, and all of a sudden there was this awful bang outside and lots of screaming, shouting and police sirens. Hotel needs better windows, won't visit again.
9/11/01

Escrow of sorts

[gumpish]

If the goal of the unmasking is to determine whether the Yelp complainers were actual customers (as the fine article states) couldn't the judge be provided the names of the Yelpers and the list of Mr. Hadeed's customers and make that determination without revealing their identities to Mr. Hadeed or the public at large? (I'm not saying it's morally or legally correct for anyone to know the identity of the Yelpers, but this would seem preferable to telling Mr. Hadeed who the complaining customers were, enabling him to harrass them.)

Re:negative feedback?

[SJHillman]

A few companies, at least in New York, have gotten in trouble for fake positive reviews.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/23/new-york-fake-online-reviews-yoghurt