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French Blogger Fined For Negative Restaurant Review
An anonymous reader sends an article about another case in which a business who received a negative review online decided to retaliate with legal complaints. In August of last year, a French food blogger posted a review of an Italian restaurant called Il Giardino. The restaurant owners responded with legal threats based on the claim that they lost business from search results which included the review. The blogger deleted the post, but that wasn't enough. She was brought to court, and a fine of €1,500 ($2,040) was imposed. She also had to pay court costs, which added another €1,000 ($1,360). The blogger said, "Recently several writers in France were sentenced in similar proceedings for defamation, invasion of privacy, and so on. ... I don't see the point of criticism if it's only positive. It's clear that online, people are suspicious of places that only get positive reviews."
When are these businesses going to learn that when you lawyer up against negative reviews, it suddenly becomes *newsworthy* and only makes the situation that much worse. Maybe if they spent their legal fees on training for their waitstaff, they wouldn't get those negative reviews to start with. Crazy thought, I know.
The more seriously slander and libel are punished, the more damage a single act of slander or libel can do. Things are so bad these days that most people are inclined to believe practically everything they read/hear and even fair criticism is subject to legal action.
Wouldn't it be nice to have some form of "free speech" which, if guarded carefully, would require people to actually think for themselves and always consider the reputation of a source alongside its content.
That's nice, but it really doesn't apply to reviews of any kind. After all, if you can't talk about the problems, screwups, and deficiencies, you'll never be able to improve, and there's a high probability that things will just get worse.
Glad for you. But, in France, out of the thousands and thousands of negative critics on the web, it happens sometimes/rarely that someone is prosecuted. And when this (rarely) happens, the media covers largely the fact, as it definitely is an exception. You can bet the woman will change lawyers, appeal, and win.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
France (and Europe in general ?) has strictly no culture of natural Rights.
And you came to that conclusion...how exactly?
Ezekiel 23:20
Seriously?? In a country where people plea-bargain to get a shorter sentence, even if they know they're innocent because they can't afford a descent lawyer, therefore leaving the real perp to go free and a 'magically solved' crime. A country that rich get off free, and the poor get sentenced. You can't even fly FPV now! No problem here in Europe.
Btw, let me quote Voltaire's famous words in a letter to M. le Riche: "I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.". A bon entendeur...
France (and Europe in general ?) has strictly no culture of natural Rights.
Google "Déclaration des droits de l'homme", connard.
You can, you just need to phrase it right -
"I love how you can always find a table there!"
"You never need to tip the servers!"
"The bartender was at his best when serving Bud Light!"
What was denounced was the fact that freedom of expression does not give you a freedom to falsehood and lies.
The problem with this is who gets to decide what is "true"? If there are laws about denying the holocaust it is only a very short step to having laws against denying say global warming since it would be very easy to argue that denying this might potentially cause a lot more harm to society than denying the holocaust. Even with the current law what happens if a historian uncovers documents suggesting that what was previously thought to be a massacre of 20 Jews outside a French village was actually the killing of 20 French resistance fighters? Can they get prosecuted for denying part of the holocaust even if they have evidence to back up their claims?
The truth is a moving target because we do not, and cannot, know everything so legislating the truth is misguided. In addition it is dangerous because the best way to let everyone know that people like holocaust deniers are idiots is to let them speak. If you gag them and haul them away to prison you have lost the best tool in your arsenal to stop the idiocy spreading or does the French government have such a low opinion of their own citizens that they think they will not see through these idiots?
You local sheriff just called. He want his tank back...
https://www.google.com/search?q=militarization+US+police&source=lnms&tbm=isch&biw=1120&bih=579
Justice cannot exist the law is so convoluted that a if a third party professional is required to help you understand it. Then it just becomes a competition to find out which professional is most cunning, rather than who is legally in the right.
If the judge is prejudiced against you for choosing not to use a lawyer, it's just a protection racket where everyone involved in law is scratching each others' backs.
There are no good old glorious times or values here, that's an American concept, no Martin Luther King day, no Alamo, ... the French revolution was started by woman begging for food, WWI by some anarchist.
As a "former European" you should know how crazy it is to claim that Europe has some sort of common values.
There are no "European values". There's a bunch of countries with different values who happens to be in a trade union together.
It is only the politicians who have been lying about the EU and are trying to make it into United States of Europe who will claim we have a "united Europe" with the same values. Every single true European knows each country has it's own values.
Yet something could be true in a literal sense but give a deceiving view of reality. Imagine you sitting down at a restaurant and offered something to drink. You immediatly request silverware and the next two servers that pass by your table receive the same request. Now you requested silverware 3 times in a literal sense before you could eat your salad but the reality of the story is that you had no problems with getting silverware, you were just being an impatient douchebag.
There, I've set up a situation that could be considered libel/slander/defamation but be true in every sense of the word.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
Properly represented? You shouldn't even be in court in the first place to need representation just because you made a comment about a restaurant.
And if this blog article comes up "too high" in Google's search for the town, can you seriously blame the blogger? Blame Google if you want to blame anyone, but don't blame the blogger because of Google's page rank algorithms.