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Yelp Ordered To Identify User Accused of Defaming a Tax Preparer (bloomberg.com)
mi writes: California State Appeals Court ruled this week that Yelp can't shield the identify of an anonymous reviewer who posted allegedly defamatory statements about a tax preparer. "The three-judge appeals panel in Santa Ana agreed with Yelp that it could protect the First Amendment rights of its anonymous reviewer but it still had to turn over the information," reports Bloomberg. "The panel reasoned that the accountant had made a showing that the review was defamatory in that it went beyond expressing an opinion and allegedly included false statements."
Suppose you have someone who starts making up negative things about you and posting them on a website. This happens *all the time* IRL.
A small business can lose massive amounts of money because an employee's ex-boyfriend leaves lies online about the business, for example. That's not protected speech under the First Amendment--it may even be a violation of a restraining order. This can lead to people losing their jobs, to businesses shutting down, to additional stress on victims of domestic violence, and to customers being helped by people who are less good at the job, for example.
That's an extreme example but not a very unusual one.
Reviewers who leave their opinions and factual statements about their experience with a business need to be protected under the First Amendment. But someone who just checks the anonymous box to make up lies deserves to be unmasked.
If you reveal your identity to someone in order to post a comment, then you really shouldn't expect to be beyond the reach of the law. You need to be logged in to post a Yelp review, so *obviously* you're not *really* anonymous.
But seriously, the line between free speech and defamation isn't really that hard to navigate. You can be pretty offensive without libeling anyone.
"This advisor is a worthless waste of space. He is personally obnoxious, morally repugnant, mentally negligible and physically repulsive. Merely by breathing he pollutes the good clean air of his city; in a just world, he would have been aborted and his mother done penance for conceiving him." - This is completely fair comment, protected speech. Nobody can sue you for posting this.
"This advisor told me I could still file a XD-426 two days late and it would still be accepted" - now that is an alleged statement of fact, not an opinion, and you damn' well better be able to back it up.
Just because you are allowed to say it, does not mean you can hide behind anonymity to protect your sorry self from the backlash of what you said.
Sure, you have the right to you opinion. Just claim it as yours, and yours, and face the response. If you have somehow broken the law in the expression, then accept it!
Don't be a coward.
Freedom of speech is not the freedom to defame. We have a system for handling defamation, and it seems to be working here.
Anonymity is a goal, it is not something you can declare.
Just like a secret is not a thing that you told people not to tell anybody; that's only an attempt at secrecy. If it is actually secret depends on if they actually tell anybody.
So for example a legally-protected Trade Secret, you have to keep it secret. It only protects you if somebody violates the law (including civil law, such as a contract) in disclosing it. But if you forget to make somebody sign an NDA and they tell everybody, guess what? It stopped being a secret as soon as you told them!
A lot of people believe, "If I can't see them, they can't see me" and so when they go online, they think they're anonymous; after all, they can't see any of the people with access to their activities!
If you don't want your publisher to be exposed to lawsuits intending to unmask your identity, don't tell your publisher your identity! In this case, that would mean both lying about your name, and also using a VPN.
Personally, if I say your business sucks online and you want to sue me over it, I wouldn't want to hide behind anonymity, I'd want to roast you in the media for it really hard. People don't like it when businesses do that, it is very bad PR!
After some digging to find the actual review, it seemed fairly tame to me. The reviewer should have a copy of the tax-return that was "sloppy" & a copy of the one they had completed by another firm, maybe it will prove the review to be accurate.
The review:
Too bad there is no zero star option! I made the mistake of using them and had an absolute nightmare. Bill was way more than their quote; return was so sloppy I had another firm redo it and my return more than doubled. If you dare to complain get ready to be screamed at, verbally harassed and threatened with legal action. I chalked it up as a very expensive lesson, hope this spares someone else the same.
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT