Slashdot Mirror
Businesses May No Longer Sue Customers Over Negative Reviews (thenextweb.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Next Web: A few months I wrote about the Consumer Review Fairness Act. In a nutshell, this offers legal protections to consumers who leave negative reviews on sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor. You can now call out the restaurant who gave you food poisoning, or a bed-bug infested hotel without the risk of being dragged into a civil court. The long-overdue bill explicitly bans non-disparagement clauses in contracts between businesses and patrons. Over the years, there's been a rash of people getting sued after speaking their mind online. Today, President Obama signed off on the Consumer Review Fairness Act. It's now law. As great as this is for consumers, it's even better for the likes of TripAdvisor and Yelp, whose business model relies on people being able to speak their minds.
There, I said it.
I know Sue. She's bad in bed
... we will see a lawsuit filed to challenge the constitutionality of this law in hopes of having it overturned ASAP.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I was dealing with a horrific slumlord in NYC.
As part of the settlement, I had to remove a negative review from yelp and pay a $10000 fine if I post a negative review in the future.
My review was not insulting or petty, but simply stated what had happened.
Does this law invalidate such clauses, or is a clause in a contract prohibiting negative reviews still valid?
. As great as this is for consumers, it's even better for the likes of TripAdvisor and Yelp, whose business model relies on people being able to speak their minds.
Yelp is a glorified e-racketeer that collects extortion fees from small businesses the world over. Please spare me the "people being ale to speak their minds" BS.
What if the customer is lying? Like suppose they falsely claim food poisoning in retaliation for poor service. Could the business then sue them for unwarranted slander?
So we needed a Republican Congress and a lame-duck Democrat President?
Trump is going to open up those laws again! https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Shouldn't Freedom of speech have a higher priority than a vague "we have the right to make money"?
When can we appeal to freedom of speech, and when can we not?
If the business is Twitter or Facebook, they can ban users for whatever obscure and selectively enforced rules they want. We can't appeal to free speech in those cases because they're both private businesses.
But posting a negative review would seem to be free speech and should be protected over the wishes of the business involved.
So which is it?
Should government force businesses to protect free speech or not?
(Of note: We expect businesses to be agnostic over hiring women and blacks, because not doing so would be a violation of their civil rights. We don't allow businesses to turn over subscriber information to the government without a warrant, because that would also be a violation of rights. Why is free speech any different?)
I'm against it. Business rights! Pepe! Build the wall! Muh top keks!
Under the Constitution contract law was left to the states. The federal government cant step on state interpretations of contract law. There is no supremacy argument that they are allowed to make here. Whether non-disparagement clauses are enforceable or not is a classic state court issue under state contract law. The federal government doesn't get to play in this sphere no matter the half baked first amendment and commerce clause arguments they will present.
Now what I just said was the same argument segregationists used to argue that clauses restricting sales of property to minorities were okay. The Supreme Court said "no" in those cases because those clauses violated equal protection and they invented a whole "penumbra" of rights doctrine to support federal government interference in what was state law. That had to be done. That was the right call even if the legal justification if we are honest was pure invented nonsense. But to give non-disparagement clauses the same "fundamental right" treatment.... I don't think so. This will got to the SCOTUS. That much is pretty much guaranteed.
just kidding:)
Of course you can still be sued for defamation. Your review must be factually correct, or at least a matter of opinion, and you can be sued on that basis.
What this new law does is says you can't enter into a contract prohibiting product reviews as part of, say, a purchase, and then be sued for breach of contract.
Does this mean we will now see actual honest reviews for Apple products?
I read the text of that bill, since it's short, and there's no restriction on paying people to leave positive or negative reviews. Sounds like something could be done where an expensive service is coupled with a large bounty (paid to customers only) for positive reviews. Of course, the IRS would want their cut of the additional customer income.
text review is free speech, but star ratings are not!
example: four different resturants given one star ratings;
review of restaurant one: the food was terrible.
review of restaurant two: my girlfrind stood me up.
review of restaurant tree: it was raining all day.
review of restaurant four: the food was too expensive.
without star ratings all are free speech.
but who and what training qualified the reviewers to award star ratings?
They've known that this is an issue - 'over the years'.
And Obama waits to sign it on his way out the door?
Strange.
Now they'll have to sue people for libel.
Mr Obama, tear down this wall! Once pot is legal across 50 states, Trump will face an enormous backlash trying to change that.
Some progress, this should never have been allowed in the first place.
The summary leaves out several very important limits on this new law:
1. It does not apply to business that don't sell directly in interstate commerce. (This is narrower than the usual "affecting commerce" language Congress likes to use.) So your local lawn-care service for example may be exempt.
2. It only applies to businesses that use "form" contracts.
3. It only applies to those "form" contracts if the customer does not have a meaningful opportunity to negotiate.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
The law doesn't say you cannot be sued. The law makes certain contractual terms void.
The possibility still exists that you could be sued.
Your chance of victory may be higher and your cost of winning that suit might be lower than otherwise.
In a nut shell? What's in a nutshell? Do I need a cracker? Do we have a squirrel infestation? The expression bugs me.
4Chan gave me the clap.
Absolute BS...if you post fraudulent reviews in an attempt to hurt the reputation of a business you can have your butt hauled into court and sued for everything you own in a defamation lawsuit. Obama's no accountability, no responsibility is as pathetic as he is.