Court Rules Against Online Anonymity

cstacy writes "The Virginia Court of Appeals has ruled (PDF) that people leaving negative feedback for a carpet cleaning service are not allowed to remain anonymous. Yelp must unmask seven critics to the carpet cleaner, who feels that they might not even be real customers."

And thus ends Yelp.

[Kenja]

Since the whole point is to give unbiased feed back and the chance of repercussions by definition creates a bias, that's more or less the end of that.

Papers please comrade ...

[Anonymous Coward]

You do not have the right to not identify yourself.

America is rapidly ceasing to be free in all meaningful sense of the word.

Oh, sure, you can act like you're free. But the reality is, you are rapidly becoming a police state.

Re:And thus ends Yelp.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't support that enough. Here in Germany, they bought a local competitor, and suddenly all the positive reviews disappeared unless you pay for an "advertisement package".

Re:And thus ends Yelp.

[mythosaz]

There's pretty much four types of reviewers on Yelp, in pretty much this order or volume:

1) The semi-professional Yelp reviewer. He's writing yelp reviews for every last thing he does.
2) Shills, inflating their companies and friends, and leaving crap for competitors.
3) Guys who got a toenail in their lunch who made an account to complain.
A distant 4) People who had a great meal who felt a need to share.

If you know this, you can still read between the lines and make informed reviews.