Yes... I can see how that remark would have been defamatory.
It was fine for him to say that the bill was way more than their quote, because he can probably evidentially substantiate that (or if he cannot, but it is true, for example via a verbal quote only, the company will not be able to disprove it) but where he crossed the line into defamatory was when he called their work "sloppy" without substantiating it with actual facts (how well another company might do the same job is irrelevant... and his choice to seek an alternative was his own, having no bearing on how well the company did) At most he could only have said that the return they prepared was not as favourable as the another company's. Instead of saying that one should prepare to get screamed at if they complain about being overcharged, he should have said that when he complained to them about the bill being higher than the quote, they said X, Y, and Z (whatever words were exchanged), and also (whatever else they really did which would lead one to reasonably conclude that they harrassed him and threatened legal action). Doing so would be an unbiased account of the events, as they occurred, even though his opinions remain quite biased.
As I said above, the only way that opinions are actually protected from defamation is when they clearly fall under the category of "fair comment", and his above review does not, because it is missing far too many details about what the company *ACTUALLY* did to merit such an evaluation. Unbiased truth that is historically accurate is always the single best defense you can possibly have against any defamation case.
You might want to review the laws governing defamation in the USA. Intent, insomuch as it can be inferred based on real-world evidence, such as what was said, how it was said, etc, very much pays a role. your safest course of action is to describe, accurately and irrefutably, exactly what happened to create the negative impression, withut presenting any sentiment such as incompetent, unprofessional, dishonest, etc. if you want to say they are dishonest, for example, you describe what they did, exactly, to create that impression, and leave all expression of your on sentiment out of it, to avoid any outward appearance of malice, which is what will get you into trouble even if your accounting of facts is entirely truthful. If you think they were rude, you recount what exchange occurred to create that impression. Without any outward negative terms used to describe them, directly, they have no basis for a malicious motive, and cannot possibly show how a truthful account was not at least accurate from what you knew at the time that you said those things.
All of this does presume,however, that you are actually telling an unbiased account (albeit still one limited to whatever you had experienced) of what happened, which should be quite simple to do if you are willing to adhere simply to the unemotional telling of the actual real wold events,as they actually occurred or a you actually experienced them personally
When I first read the headline, I was thinking that these people should probably be fired, but you've raised a good point. At the place where I used to work, my supervisor would quite routinely watch Netflix during his lunch break, while eating at his desk, and there was nothing wrong with it.
The office floor plan there was open, so it's not like he was in a private place where nobody could see what he was doing either.
Of course if you say something like "I wasn't happy", you're fine... that's clearly an expression of your own personal feelings, which are entirely protected... not because it is simply your own opinion, but because it is true (or presumed to be true, as you are the most knowledgeable person about your own feelings).
In fact, the only way that opinions are actually protected in any way from being defamatory is under the category of being a "fair comment", which itself may be an opinion, but one which is itself formed entirely based on accurate facts, and do not allege dishonorable motives or intentions against the person about whom the statements were made. If the outward appearance exists that the comment was made out of malice (in particular to the judge), regardless of how much you might try and disguise it as just your own opinion, then trying to use that defence will not pass, unless the other party has a real shitty lawyer.
If what you do is simply state a factual accounting of a negative experience that you had, it is impossible to disprove the accounting because by definition, the account is factual.
If I truthfully say that such-and-such a company refused to offer any sort of refund on an appliance that was well within its warranty period, but did not actually work as it should have*, for example, I can do that without worrying in the slightest about any possible negative repercussions on account of so-called defamatory remarks because the only way that they can allege that the statements were false is to either assert that never offered any customer satisfaction warranty in the first place (which is easy to show), or that they actually *did* offer a refund when asked about it (which is also easy to prove because there would be a financial record of the transaction).
*This happened to me, actually. My wife and I bought a convection oven a few years ago... and we only discovered about 4 months after buying it that despite the oven clearly having separate "bake" and "convection bake" modes, there was no way to actually turn the convection fan off during the regular bake cycle... all that so-called regular baking meant is that the fan would not be on all of the time. When baking delicate goods, however, the rapid movement of air inside of the oven during preparation can completely destroy the ability for them to be prepared as intended. We went to the place where we bought it, and they said that they would replace it with a different oven if we could get an RMA from the manufacturer, which we attempted to do, but hit up against a brick wall when they basically blamed our dissatisfaction on a failure on our own part to understand how their baking system worked, which one would have only been able to reasonably discover by reading the user's manual for the oven in quite exhaustive detail. Truthfully, we would have been entirely happy to have found a different oven by the same manufacturer... but that wasn't meant to be. Not a fun way to basically flush almost my entire hiring bonus I got at my then new job down the toilet.
The mere claim that something is an opinion does not mean that it will necessarily be seen as such... you have to tread *very* carefully here. People have lost lawsuits for defamation just for saying stuff that may have very well been just in their opinion, but only came across as a deliberate attempt at slander.
... had first heard the term in this context (a reflection on it 30 years later is here), I had always found the importing of the term into Canada, which seemed to only start to become a big thing here after around 1990 or so, to be inconsiderate towards those that experienced the event, and especially those who lost someone they cared about on that day. While I know it is not deliberate by any means, as one who lived through that event, it will never be a term that sits well with me, and will forever be associated with that day.
For comparison, how would it look to you if some other country were to have had some big consumerism event going on that they had happened to always refer to as 9-11 (possibly only as a reference to store hours... open from 9am until 11pm, for instance), and they wanted to bring it into the USA? It's unlikely it would be seen to be in very good taste, even though absolutely no offense may have ever be intended.
I'm not suggesting that the Americans should change the name of the event.... but I do quite firmly believe that it should not be happening here.
Of course you are entitled to your opinion, but even expression something that is just an opinion can get you into a lot of hot water if your expression comes across as being willfully spiteful simply because of your own personal dissatisfaction with the service, and if they have a good enough lawyer, that hot water can still easily be enough to drown in. Also, you had better have explicitly stated that everything was just in your own opinion, or else regardless of your intent, it can still be taken as defamatory. Even then, however, depending in the context, that may not be enough, because if you say that they did "sloppy" work, for example, and they can show that they had done absolutely everything that they were reasonably supposed to have done, based on the information they had at the time, even if you were not satisfied with the final result, then such a remark can easily be considered to still be a deliberately made false statement, unless you can also prove that you had no way to not realize they had done everything they were supposed to have (which requires proving a negative, which can often be extremely difficult), or if you can prove that they knew, or if you can offer a very substantial proof that they at least *should* have known it. Any after-the-fact expression that it was supposedly just "your opinion" in the context of having just appeared to make one or more deliberately false statements about them then comes across as simply another deliberately false statement being made to only very superficially appear to cover it up. Telling what can look like a deliberate lie to someone else and then only later saying that it was all just in your opinion *MIGHT* save your bacon, but it is quite far from foolproof... and remember, quite often all that something has to do to be considered sufficiently defamatory to merit legal consequences is *LOOK* like it was a deliberate false statement, even if it really was just an opinion.
If you adhere simply to the facts as you would have had every reason to have known them, leaving absolutely all opinion out of it, and allow the reader to come only to their own opinion, you are always entirely covered.
This is why it's far better, especially when leaving a poor review online, to actually only state the facts as they happened which drew you to come to such a negative perception about them, leaving aside any personal feelings about them, and allowing the reader of the review to draw their own conclusions from the description of your negative encounter. Terms like "sloppy" or "terrible" can be left out entirely, as one describes exactly *why* one might make such a conclusion about the company without once actually using any such adjectives to describe them, nor even suggest to the reader that such a negative conclusion is the one they ought to have, beyond perhaps a one-off initial statement testifying that you were uinsatisfied.
You are completely untouchable for such remarks... as all you have done is simply expressed an honest accounting of the facts, as you would have had every reason to have known that they actually happened, and a would-be accuser would not be able to bring you to court over the matter, no matter what kind of harm it may have caused them, without committing perjury in the process.
The first amendment protects a person's right to express what they wish, but it does not protect them from the consequences that might arise from having otherwise harmed others through such expression.
The biggest reason that it so hard to win a lawsuit for defamation or slander is not because of the first amendment, or even because it might be hard to prove that it was anything more than an opinion, but to also prove that the person did not actually ever believe whatever they were saying to be true.
... an advertiser target their ads to me, because I either fast forward through the commercials if I've recorded the show on a pvr, or more commonly, I will usually leave the room during a commercial break and go do something else productive for a few minutes before coming back. Because our pvr allows me to back up and replay "live tv", I can always back up a few seconds to catch something I missed if I don't get back before the commercial break is over.
Either way, the content of the commercials is irrelevant.
But it is nowhere near as prevalent as many would assume, and saying otherwise is really just irresponsible
Only if one is not prepared to be responsible for how they themselves act towards others, or to pass the blame for any lack of decent standards on the society in which they live instead of holding themselves accountable for their own choices and practices, and striving to live above a standard that may be deemed as unfair and unjust, even while society itself might continue to remain so.
It sucks that so many people can't see past the superfluous differences of what country a person happens to be from or what color their skin happens to be, and treat every single person with no less respect than what anyone would desire to be treated themselves, but going after a company like Telsa for this is not going accomplish a darn thing other than at most, cost Tesla some money that won't have the slightest impact on society at large beyond possibly making their cars even more expensive.
Hell, even the laws of thermodynamics suggest not only that life's not fair, but that you also can't get even either.
These people make you WANT to give them your passwords and information.
The point is that by "making you want to" give them your passwords, etc, you are being put under duress by that third party, and that is a mental state that would be prohibited from accessing the system.
The principle behind it being that if that third party knows that any information they might be able to get from you, no matter how accurate, and regardless of the means that they use, was not going to allow them to access your device, unless providing such access to them had always been your intent from the start, then they aren't going to generally go to the trouble of trying to extract it from you in the first place.
I'm suggesting that if the would-be assailant realizes that beating you isn't going to make any difference to their own ends, they wouldn't bother trying to beat you to death in the first place.
It would reduce the number, of course... but then I imagine that only very narrow class of personality types would want to utilize such extreme measures of protection in the first place. In all probability, we are talking about people with secrets that they are entirely already willing to take to their graves with them... not because they have necessarily done anything wrong, but because is is private.
And still the powers that be wouldn't be able to unlock them.
The point of this would be that it is not even posisble to "cough the password up", because it is tied to your psychological state of mind, which you don't even necessarily have any conscious control over. In principle, if you were accessing the device of your own accord, and willingness to do so that was not itself prompted by anything other than your own agendas, then the password would work entirely fine. But if not, then it wouldn't. The idea being that the principles behind how the tech functions at a very general level would be understood well enough to know that you were, quite literally, incapable of providing them with the information that they wanted.
They could kill you for it, but they'd still not have the information.... and what would killing you accomplish? A lesson to others to not defy the authorities? You wouldn't be defying the authorities in such a case because you could go through every physical motion that they ask you to do, including divulging the secret key itself, and it still would not help anyone because of the additional protective securities that analyze your thought patterns to determine if you are under duress.
Slashdot Mirror
... two whole months for the AI to diagnose pneumonia, you'll be lucky to still be alive by then.
Please note, I said historically accurate facts. What was said, what was done, etc, not "how" things were said or done.
It was fine for him to say that the bill was way more than their quote, because he can probably evidentially substantiate that (or if he cannot, but it is true, for example via a verbal quote only, the company will not be able to disprove it) but where he crossed the line into defamatory was when he called their work "sloppy" without substantiating it with actual facts (how well another company might do the same job is irrelevant... and his choice to seek an alternative was his own, having no bearing on how well the company did) At most he could only have said that the return they prepared was not as favourable as the another company's. Instead of saying that one should prepare to get screamed at if they complain about being overcharged, he should have said that when he complained to them about the bill being higher than the quote, they said X, Y, and Z (whatever words were exchanged), and also (whatever else they really did which would lead one to reasonably conclude that they harrassed him and threatened legal action). Doing so would be an unbiased account of the events, as they occurred, even though his opinions remain quite biased.
As I said above, the only way that opinions are actually protected from defamation is when they clearly fall under the category of "fair comment", and his above review does not, because it is missing far too many details about what the company *ACTUALLY* did to merit such an evaluation. Unbiased truth that is historically accurate is always the single best defense you can possibly have against any defamation case.
You might want to review the laws governing defamation in the USA. Intent, insomuch as it can be inferred based on real-world evidence, such as what was said, how it was said, etc, very much pays a role. your safest course of action is to describe, accurately and irrefutably, exactly what happened to create the negative impression, withut presenting any sentiment such as incompetent, unprofessional, dishonest, etc. if you want to say they are dishonest, for example, you describe what they did, exactly, to create that impression, and leave all expression of your on sentiment out of it, to avoid any outward appearance of malice, which is what will get you into trouble even if your accounting of facts is entirely truthful. If you think they were rude, you recount what exchange occurred to create that impression. Without any outward negative terms used to describe them, directly, they have no basis for a malicious motive, and cannot possibly show how a truthful account was not at least accurate from what you knew at the time that you said those things.
All of this does presume ,however, that you are actually telling an unbiased account (albeit still one limited to whatever you had experienced) of what happened, which should be quite simple to do if you are willing to adhere simply to the unemotional telling of the actual real wold events,as they actually occurred or a you actually experienced them personally
[nt]
When I first read the headline, I was thinking that these people should probably be fired, but you've raised a good point. At the place where I used to work, my supervisor would quite routinely watch Netflix during his lunch break, while eating at his desk, and there was nothing wrong with it.
The office floor plan there was open, so it's not like he was in a private place where nobody could see what he was doing either.
Oh.... and if you have a record of both financial transactions, you can also say "he double charged me" without any worries either.
Of course if you say something like "I wasn't happy", you're fine... that's clearly an expression of your own personal feelings, which are entirely protected... not because it is simply your own opinion, but because it is true (or presumed to be true, as you are the most knowledgeable person about your own feelings).
In fact, the only way that opinions are actually protected in any way from being defamatory is under the category of being a "fair comment", which itself may be an opinion, but one which is itself formed entirely based on accurate facts, and do not allege dishonorable motives or intentions against the person about whom the statements were made. If the outward appearance exists that the comment was made out of malice (in particular to the judge), regardless of how much you might try and disguise it as just your own opinion, then trying to use that defence will not pass, unless the other party has a real shitty lawyer.
If what you do is simply state a factual accounting of a negative experience that you had, it is impossible to disprove the accounting because by definition, the account is factual.
If I truthfully say that such-and-such a company refused to offer any sort of refund on an appliance that was well within its warranty period, but did not actually work as it should have*, for example, I can do that without worrying in the slightest about any possible negative repercussions on account of so-called defamatory remarks because the only way that they can allege that the statements were false is to either assert that never offered any customer satisfaction warranty in the first place (which is easy to show), or that they actually *did* offer a refund when asked about it (which is also easy to prove because there would be a financial record of the transaction).
*This happened to me, actually. My wife and I bought a convection oven a few years ago... and we only discovered about 4 months after buying it that despite the oven clearly having separate "bake" and "convection bake" modes, there was no way to actually turn the convection fan off during the regular bake cycle... all that so-called regular baking meant is that the fan would not be on all of the time. When baking delicate goods, however, the rapid movement of air inside of the oven during preparation can completely destroy the ability for them to be prepared as intended. We went to the place where we bought it, and they said that they would replace it with a different oven if we could get an RMA from the manufacturer, which we attempted to do, but hit up against a brick wall when they basically blamed our dissatisfaction on a failure on our own part to understand how their baking system worked, which one would have only been able to reasonably discover by reading the user's manual for the oven in quite exhaustive detail. Truthfully, we would have been entirely happy to have found a different oven by the same manufacturer... but that wasn't meant to be. Not a fun way to basically flush almost my entire hiring bonus I got at my then new job down the toilet.
The mere claim that something is an opinion does not mean that it will necessarily be seen as such... you have to tread *very* carefully here. People have lost lawsuits for defamation just for saying stuff that may have very well been just in their opinion, but only came across as a deliberate attempt at slander.
Are out suggesting a similar change to the word aerodynamics?
For comparison, how would it look to you if some other country were to have had some big consumerism event going on that they had happened to always refer to as 9-11 (possibly only as a reference to store hours... open from 9am until 11pm, for instance), and they wanted to bring it into the USA? It's unlikely it would be seen to be in very good taste, even though absolutely no offense may have ever be intended.
I'm not suggesting that the Americans should change the name of the event.... but I do quite firmly believe that it should not be happening here.
Of course you are entitled to your opinion, but even expression something that is just an opinion can get you into a lot of hot water if your expression comes across as being willfully spiteful simply because of your own personal dissatisfaction with the service, and if they have a good enough lawyer, that hot water can still easily be enough to drown in. Also, you had better have explicitly stated that everything was just in your own opinion, or else regardless of your intent, it can still be taken as defamatory. Even then, however, depending in the context, that may not be enough, because if you say that they did "sloppy" work, for example, and they can show that they had done absolutely everything that they were reasonably supposed to have done, based on the information they had at the time, even if you were not satisfied with the final result, then such a remark can easily be considered to still be a deliberately made false statement, unless you can also prove that you had no way to not realize they had done everything they were supposed to have (which requires proving a negative, which can often be extremely difficult), or if you can prove that they knew, or if you can offer a very substantial proof that they at least *should* have known it. Any after-the-fact expression that it was supposedly just "your opinion" in the context of having just appeared to make one or more deliberately false statements about them then comes across as simply another deliberately false statement being made to only very superficially appear to cover it up. Telling what can look like a deliberate lie to someone else and then only later saying that it was all just in your opinion *MIGHT* save your bacon, but it is quite far from foolproof... and remember, quite often all that something has to do to be considered sufficiently defamatory to merit legal consequences is *LOOK* like it was a deliberate false statement, even if it really was just an opinion.
If you adhere simply to the facts as you would have had every reason to have known them, leaving absolutely all opinion out of it, and allow the reader to come only to their own opinion, you are always entirely covered.
This is why it's far better, especially when leaving a poor review online, to actually only state the facts as they happened which drew you to come to such a negative perception about them, leaving aside any personal feelings about them, and allowing the reader of the review to draw their own conclusions from the description of your negative encounter. Terms like "sloppy" or "terrible" can be left out entirely, as one describes exactly *why* one might make such a conclusion about the company without once actually using any such adjectives to describe them, nor even suggest to the reader that such a negative conclusion is the one they ought to have, beyond perhaps a one-off initial statement testifying that you were uinsatisfied.
You are completely untouchable for such remarks... as all you have done is simply expressed an honest accounting of the facts, as you would have had every reason to have known that they actually happened, and a would-be accuser would not be able to bring you to court over the matter, no matter what kind of harm it may have caused them, without committing perjury in the process.
The first amendment protects a person's right to express what they wish, but it does not protect them from the consequences that might arise from having otherwise harmed others through such expression.
The biggest reason that it so hard to win a lawsuit for defamation or slander is not because of the first amendment, or even because it might be hard to prove that it was anything more than an opinion, but to also prove that the person did not actually ever believe whatever they were saying to be true.
I was not alleging anything about the USA in particular... other so-called progressive countries are often not any better.
Maybe just a little, yeah... but that doesn't mean it isn't true.
Either way, the content of the commercials is irrelevant.
Only if one is not prepared to be responsible for how they themselves act towards others, or to pass the blame for any lack of decent standards on the society in which they live instead of holding themselves accountable for their own choices and practices, and striving to live above a standard that may be deemed as unfair and unjust, even while society itself might continue to remain so.
Society itself is a "hotbed for racist behavior".
It sucks that so many people can't see past the superfluous differences of what country a person happens to be from or what color their skin happens to be, and treat every single person with no less respect than what anyone would desire to be treated themselves, but going after a company like Telsa for this is not going accomplish a darn thing other than at most, cost Tesla some money that won't have the slightest impact on society at large beyond possibly making their cars even more expensive.
Hell, even the laws of thermodynamics suggest not only that life's not fair, but that you also can't get even either.
The point is that by "making you want to" give them your passwords, etc, you are being put under duress by that third party, and that is a mental state that would be prohibited from accessing the system.
The principle behind it being that if that third party knows that any information they might be able to get from you, no matter how accurate, and regardless of the means that they use, was not going to allow them to access your device, unless providing such access to them had always been your intent from the start, then they aren't going to generally go to the trouble of trying to extract it from you in the first place.
I'm suggesting that if the would-be assailant realizes that beating you isn't going to make any difference to their own ends, they wouldn't bother trying to beat you to death in the first place.
It would reduce the number, of course... but then I imagine that only very narrow class of personality types would want to utilize such extreme measures of protection in the first place. In all probability, we are talking about people with secrets that they are entirely already willing to take to their graves with them... not because they have necessarily done anything wrong, but because is is private.
And still the powers that be wouldn't be able to unlock them.
They could kill you for it, but they'd still not have the information.... and what would killing you accomplish? A lesson to others to not defy the authorities? You wouldn't be defying the authorities in such a case because you could go through every physical motion that they ask you to do, including divulging the secret key itself, and it still would not help anyone because of the additional protective securities that analyze your thought patterns to determine if you are under duress.
I'm afraid to say that you actually just proved my entire point. There are more aspects to laziness than just physical activity.