California Bill Would Safeguard Consumers' Rights To Criticize Firms Online

An anonymous reader writes in with news about a California bill that aims to protect online reviewers’ rights."The proposed law appears to take aim at online licensing agreements that consumers often enter into with companies when they click through the many boilerplate terms and conditions of various online services. Buried deep in the small print of a number of these contacts are provisions stating that consumers agree not to write negative reviews about the service provider. 'If merchants think that our First Amendment free speech rights need to be curtailed, they should say so upfront and in plain language,' Pérez explained of the impetus for his bill, as reported by the Times."

Comments

Re:Not First Amendment

[Jason Levine]

It's even worse than that. The article gives the example of a company, KlearGear, trying to charge a couple because they left a negative review of the company. The wrinkle in this case: The negative review was posted three years before the lawsuit and before the "you can't criticize us online" text entered into the EULA. So the companies don't just want you to agree to whatever is in their EULA, they think you accepting the EULA means you also accept any future version of the EULA no matter what restrictions get added on.

In the case of the couple, the charge was sent to a collections agency which hurt the couple's credit rating. They, in turn, sued KlearGear to have the debt declared null and void. When KlearGear didn't show up to challenge the suit, the judge ruled in favor of the couple. What would have happened had KlearGear had a better legal team, though? Even if they didn't win, they could have easily tied the couple up in court for months or years, forcing them to bankruptcy with legal fees, until the company settled out of court with the couple. (Perhaps dropping the original fee in exchange for no precedent being set against the company and maybe even some token amount that wouldn't even cover the couples' legal costs.)

I agree that agreements can over-ride constitutional rights in some cases. For example, if I sign an NDA, I'm restricting my freedom of speech in a certain regard. However, these agreements should only be done on when something needs to be kept under wraps (details of a new product shown to reviewers early, for example), not as a matter-of-normal-business instituted when anyone has even the slightest business association with the company.