It Will Soon Be Illegal To Punish US Customers Who Criticize Businesses Online (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Congress has passed a law protecting the right of U.S. consumers to post negative online reviews without fear of retaliation from companies. The bipartisan Consumer Review Fairness Act was passed by unanimous consent in the US Senate, a Senate Commerce Committee announcement said. The bill, introduced in 2014, was already approved by the House of Representatives and now awaits President Obama's signature.

The Consumer Review Fairness Act -- full text available here -- voids any provision in a form contract that prohibits or restricts customers from posting reviews about the goods, services, or conduct of the company providing the product or service. It also voids provisions that impose penalties or fees on customers for posting online reviews as well as those that require customers to give up the intellectual property rights related to such reviews.

Comments

Re:We'll see how long this lasts...

[Bing Tsher E]

What do you accomplish by trying to inject Trump into this topic?

Really, what do you accomplish?

What's this?

[Black Parrot]

Congress looking out for people rather than companies???

Fetch the smelling sauce!

Re:What's this?

[ShanghaiBill]

Congress looking out for people rather than companies???

This doesn't collectively hurt companies. Bad reviews just shift revenue from one company to another. A fairer review process will likely help big corps, because they will face less pricing pressure from shoddy low-quality upstarts. There was no organized corporate resistance to this law.

Re: What's this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Smelling _Sauce_? Is this a clever cultural reference I am too English to recognise, or do you mean "salts"?

Re:What's this?

[Sique]

Even that's not for sure. He might just keep the money and reduce his debt, thus it even hurts banks not getting interest.

Re:We'll see how long this lasts...

[Dutch Gun]

Yeah, I can totally see that. I mean, obviously the whole bipartisan "unanimous vote" was just a sham, designed to dupe unsuspecting America into complacency until they can get Trump in office and then... (dun, dun, duuuuun!) reverse the law they just passed.

Pure evil. So damned diabolical. I'll bet Trump planned the entire thing. In fact, His Orangeness will probably just delete the law from history with an executive order, just to rub it in everyone's face that he's now gained absolute power over all life and space-time. Somebody needs to stop this maniac!

Oracle benchmarks

[ortholattice]

The Oracle EULA (2012) includes the clause: "Publication Prohibition. You shall not publish any results of benchmark tests run on the SOFTWARE."

I wonder if this new law means we will start seeing them.

Re:Oracle benchmarks

[mysidia]

The Oracle EULA (2012) includes the clause: "Publication Prohibition. You shall not publish any results of benchmark tests run on the SOFTWARE."

Under the act, Oracle might argue that results of standard benchmark tests against their product reveal trade secrets.

They might also argue the act does not apply, because the contract is negotiated between a Business and Oracle, not a form contract between an indivudal and Oracle. (This may mean that Oracle chooses to stop offering their products to individuals, and simply requires employees to sign NDAs instead of using form EULAs.)

A "form contract" is a contract with standardized terms: (1) used by a person in the course of selling or leasing the person's goods or services, and (2) imposed on an individual without a meaningful opportunity to negotiate the standardized terms. The definition excludes an employer-employee or independent contractor contract.

The standards under which provisions of a form contract are considered void under this bill shall not be construed to affect:

legal duties of confidentiality;
civil actions for defamation, libel, or slander; or
a party's right to establish terms and conditions for the creation of photographs or video of such party's property when those photographs or video are created by an employee or independent contractor of a commercial entity and are solely intended to be used for commercial purposes by that entity.
Such standards also shall not be construed to affect any party's right to remove or refuse to display publicly on an Internet website or webpage owned, operated, or controlled by such party content that: (1) contains the personal information or likeness of another person or is libelous, harassing, abusive, obscene, vulgar, sexually explicit, inappropriate with respect to race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, or other intrinsic characteristic; (2) is unrelated to the goods or services offered by or available at such party's website; or (3) is clearly false or misleading.

A provision shall not be considered void under this bill to the extent that it prohibits disclosure or submission of, or reserves the right of a person or business that hosts online consumer reviews or comments to remove, certain: (1) trade secrets or commercial or financial information; (2) personnel and medical files; (3) law enforcement records; (4) content that is unlawful or that a party has a right to remove or refuse to display; or (5) computer viruses or other potentially damaging computer code, processes, applications, or files.

A person is prohibited from offering form contracts containing a provision that is considered void under this bill.

Enforcement authority is provided to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and states.

The FTC must provide businesses with nonbinding best practices for compliance.

Nothing in this bill shall be construed to limit, impair, or supersede the Federal Trade Commission Act or any other federal law.

Re:Oracle benchmarks

[mysidia]

It's not clear whether it applies retroactively to contracts already agreed to.

It is not possible for Congress to make a law affecting contracts already agreed to.
Many years ago congress tried to pass a law that would have the affect of voiding some existing contracts, and
the attempt was found to be unconstitutional.

That's because it would be considered an ex post facto law

And one of the lines in the US Constitution reads:

"No bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed"

Bill of Attainder --- A legislative act that singles out an individual or group for punishment
ex post facto law -- A law that makes illegal an act that was legal when committed

Re:Oracle benchmarks

[johannesg]

How can lousy performance possibly be a trade secret?

Re:Oracle benchmarks

[sjames]

It wouldn't make the clause illegal in the sense that there would be no penalty for the party that put it in the contract. It would simply be unenforceable.

Arguably, it already is, this law just clarifies that and allows a judicial shortcut to the correct decision.

I wonder if Trump's gonna repeal it

[rsilvergun]

I almost think this is a trap (along with that new law putting E85 into cars). It's a damned if you do/damned if you don't. On the one hand it's exactly the kind of law Trump opposes (he wants to expand liable law and make a more UK-like system over here) but OTOH it's a very popular law with billions of dollars behind it (Yelp, Google, Uber, Amazon. Basically any web based company that deals in information).

Re:I wonder if Trump's gonna repeal it

[bruce_the_loon]

Considering the unanimous passing in the Senate, he'd have to do it by executive order as he'd need a majority in the House and the Senate to pass a repeal bill otherwise. Even then there's enough support around for Congress to pass it again and override a veto attempt.

Re:I wonder if Trump's gonna repeal it

[Hognoxious]

he wants to expand liable law

libel

and make a more UK-like system over here

Which aspects of that imagined system would those be?

Re:We'll see how long this lasts...

[sumdumass]

It doesn't matter what score or moderation the parent is. I as everyone should, surf slashdot at -1 and give bonuses to troll and other down mods specifically because people with agendas will use the moderation system to hide dissent.

So to a regular logged in user, your point is largely lost unless that user is only looking for an echo chamber to agree with themselves. Otherwise, they would have modified their levels also and view low scoring post.