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The Courts Censorship Government The Internet United States

It Will Soon Be Illegal To Punish US Customers Who Criticize Businesses Online (arstechnica.com) 90

Posted by EditorDavid from the facing-the-feedback dept.
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.
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It Will Soon Be Illegal To Punish US Customers Who Criticize Businesses Online More

It Will Soon Be Illegal To Punish US Customers Who Criticize Businesses Online

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  • The editors here do (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    excellent work [slashdot.org]. Five stars!

  • Look, the only reason I have been posting on Slashdot is that the threatened to sue me if I told the truth. Their posts are made of the parts of pigs that butchers throw away. The force their threaders to work 16 hour days, with no overtime, for only $5 a day. Their vowels are purchased from east Asian pirates, who when they are not stealing them, are kidnapping small dogs and harvesting all the vowels from their organs.

    God that feels good to get off my chest.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Jiro ( 131519 )

      You're obviously lying or have an agenda. East Asian languages are not written with Western letters, which leads to a surplus of unused vowels. The low price of East Asian vowels is a corollary of this cultural difference, and attributing this to vowel piracy is racist.

  • What's this? (Score:3)

    by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Saturday December 03, 2016 @05:03PM (#53416637)

    Congress looking out for people rather than companies???

    Fetch the smelling sauce!

    • 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: (Score:2)

        by Sique ( 173459 )
        Not necessarily. The potential customer could become wary and think twice if he should be shopping around, if the first company he was looking for got a lot of bad reviews. He might just skip the purchase and keep the money. It's not as if every purchase you do is out of necessity.

        • That doesn't collectively hurt companies, since he will still spend his money on something else.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by Sique ( 173459 )
            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: What's this? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

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

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      It was already illegal. Technically speaking as freedom of speech is a constitutional requirement and no law shall be enacted that infringes it, contract law is then covered. You can not write a contract, that infringes freedom of speech as that would invalidate contract law itself. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof", so technically you can not write contract law, that would enable private individuals via contracts to infringe free

      • technically you can not write contract law, that would enable private individuals via contracts to infringe freedom of speech of others.

        That must be why I've never heard of non-disclosures or commercial confidentiality.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 )

      Congress looking out for people rather than companies???

      Fetch the smelling sauce!

      Most of the companies doing this were small companies, so they amounted to little in the way of campaign donations.

  • Near the end it states:

    "A [contract form] 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: [...] (3) law enforcement records;

    Since everything on the internet is now a de-facto "law enforcement record", it follows that a contract provision is not void if it prohibits any disclosures on the internet. Right? :D

  • Yay! Freedom for the win!

    Hang on, it's anti-business. Goddam cormanusts!

  • But when will it be illegal for editors to re-post the same stories over and over on Slashdot? I'm not even a paid editor who's job it should be in part to at least keep up with what has already been posted, but I've spotted several stories today that are re-posts of things seen here in recent days. It just isn't that hard to review just the headlines of the stories when you check in to Slashdot going back to the last time you checked in. If simple (and simple minded) readers can spot the dups then someone

  • My rights as a business? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Why are liberals interfering with its my rights as a business? Who is the government to deny me the ability to retaliate against negative posters?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Corporations are people too!

  • Oracle benchmarks (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ortholattice ( 175065 ) on Saturday December 03, 2016 @05:38PM (#53416823)

    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: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Wasn't that copied from the Microsoft benchmark restrictions?

      It is there too: "13. BENCHMARK TESTING.

      a Server Software. You must obtain Microsoft’s prior written approval to disclose to a third party the results of any benchmark test of server software or additional software that comes with it."

    • Re:Oracle benchmarks (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mysidia ( 191772 ) on Saturday December 03, 2016 @06:40PM (#53417043)

      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.

      • "Corporations" is "Soylent Green"... (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        "Corporations" is "Soylent Green", I mean "People". Didn't you get the memo?

      • How can lousy performance possibly be a trade secret?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mysidia ( 191772 )

          How can lousy performance possibly be a trade secret?

          If kept sufficiently secret, it can reduce the damage which competitors' engineering and marketing departments might be able to use
          secrets derived from benchmarking data to inflict by designing scenarios for demonstration purposes and related pamphlets
          which show how faster product X is than Oracle.

          Because competitors' engineering departments won't know where X DB is weakest and also what performance aspects X DB's vendor prioritizes for customers.

    • That one has always surprised me. You'd think a database vendor would be proud to show of the results of its flagship product. That prohibition suggests, to me, that they have something to hide.

      Hey, since we're here, here is a little benchmark I ran on the Oracle systems. In the 3-4 years we ran on top of Oracle, we had a database corruption twice. We needed (and received) help from Oracle support to recover from both corruptions. In the 15 or so years we ran on top of PostgreSQL since then, we had zero dat

  • I wonder if Trump's gonna repeal it (Score:3)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday December 03, 2016 @06:32PM (#53416991)
    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).

    • 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.

    • 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: (Score:2)

        by AK Marc ( 707885 )

        Which aspects of that imagined system would those be?

        That Truth is not an absolute defense in the UK. In the US, the Truth is not an absolute defense, but the Americans wish to pretend it is.

        As for "imagined system" are you trying to imply that UK has no liable laws? Otherwise why would their system be imagined?

        • As for "imagined system" are you trying to imply that UK has no liable laws?

          Scotland has a separate legal system to England and Wales. Thus UK libel (not liable) law exists as much as Michigario's does.

          Not knowing that is pretty much proof that you aren't exactly an expert in the subject.

          That Truth is not an absolute defense in the UK.

          Why do people keep repeating this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

          Do they teach you lot in highschool that you're always right? Or only when you get to DeVry? A s

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AK Marc ( 707885 )
            So you are not disputing the fact that the truth is not an absolute defense in the US? And your cite is to a recently changed law, and, of course, being common law, the law is unrelated to the application of the law, and I don't pretend to be able to keep up with case law in all locations which use common law.

            Scotland has a separate legal system to England and Wales. Not knowing that is pretty much proof that you aren't exactly an expert in the subject.

            I did know that. I didn't make a big deal of it because it was irrelevant to the point at hand.

            Why do people keep repeating this?

            Because it's been repeated many times, and there have been some cases covered internationally where the

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      May I suggest you go back and study your civics material?
      Executive order and law approved by Congress and signed by the President are different!

      Trump indicated he will rescind executive orders, which does NOT require Congress permission, because Congress never voted for it.
      Trump WANTS congress to make laws, which a President can NOT change.

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