Yelp Can't Be Ordered To Remove Posts, Court Rules (apnews.com) 55
Yelp cannot be ordered to remove defamatory posts against a San Francisco law firm, the California Supreme Court said in a 4-3 ruling Monday that overturns one made by a lower court. From a report: In a 4-3 opinion, justices agreed, saying removal orders such as the one attorney Dawn Hassell obtained against Yelp "could interfere with and undermine the viability of an online platform." The decision overturned a lower court ruling that Yelp had said could lead to the removal of negative reviews from the popular website. Hassell said Yelp was exaggerating the stakes of her legal effort. Her attorney, Monique Olivier, said in a statement that the ruling "stands as an invitation to spread falsehoods on the internet without consequence." She said her client was considering an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Hassell's 2013 lawsuit accused a client she briefly represented in a personal injury case of defaming her on Yelp by falsely claiming that her firm failed to communicate with the client, among other things.
Positive (Score:2)
removal of negative reviews from the popular website
Ahhhh, but can they be ordered to remove positive reviews? Check. Mate.
Now we all know... (Score:2)
... which law firm to avoid.
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Do a search on restaurants in your area and see how many of the top 10 returns are Yelp links. I generally add a -yelp to my search queries just to avoid them at which point tripadvisor comes out at the top which isn't any more helpful.
The Court Opinion [PDF] (Score:5, Informative)
... which law firm to avoid.
It's a small business that made a classic business mistake of attacking a bad review rather than saying they're sorry the person was disappointed.
After the firm filed the defamation case, there was a default judgment, which usually means the defendant didn't fight it in court (they didn't get a lawyer or fight it without a lawyer). Then the law firm tried to use that judgment to force Yelp to take the review down. Yelp didn't, claiming they were protected by the Communications Decency Act, which says they're protected from being considered the "publisher" of third-party content someone posts on their site. The California Supreme Court Agreed. (They also claimed that they had not had due process because they were not part of the original case, but the CA Supreme Court did not need to rule on that issue because the Communications Decency Act determined the outcome of the case).
The law firm could still petition SCOTUS on this (contrary to what the AP coverage says, you don't "appeal" to the United States Supreme Court, you petition them for a writ of certiorari and they choose whether or not to grant it). It would be a fun argument, academically speaking. Very few people actually practice much First Amendment law, but it's a very interesting area. Obviously it's also important for a lot of businesses, because while there are lots of businesses out there with legitimately bad reviews, there are also lots of businesses out there with a couple of terrible customers who never give them a fair shake.
And because the article ridiculously didn't include a link to the court opinion, here it is: http://www.courts.ca.gov/opini... [ca.gov]
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Thanks for the informative commentary.
I know that the law, and what I think should be simple common sense often disagree. But to me this whole case seems akin to attacking the manufacturer of walkie-talkies, or cell phones because someone made a comment over them that wasn't appreciated. Only in this case everyone can hear that comment. But so what, it's that person's right to free speech, and in this case Yelp is simply providing the forum for it. Should the person make a slanderous statement, that's b
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This is closely related, in my opinion, to the efforts by the entertainment industry to get common carriers to attack copyright violators.
The proper defendant is the violator.
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More, even, to avoid the businesses that use that law firm, because we now know what that law firm is known for and what those businesses probably use it for.
Messy laws (Score:1)
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The problem starts already with there being "internet laws". What is different when something is done "on the internet"?
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Other than jurisdiction, scale, and anonymity?
Perhaps what's really new here isn't so much the Internet network itself, as the rise of 'platforms' like Yelp. Similar issues arise with Uber, AirBnB, and all the rest.
Seems a wrong decision to me. (Score:3, Informative)
That wouldn't, in any way, "lead to the removal of negative reviews from the popular website," as Yelp claims (at least not truthful, subjective opinions).
Same with "Yelp said the removal order violated a 1996 federal law that courts have widely interpreted as protecting internet companies from liability for posts by third-party users and prohibiting the companies from being treated as the speaker or publisher of usersâ(TM) posts." No one claimed Yelp was liable, they were simply told to remove the offending item. That doesn't "interfere with and undermine the viability of" Yelp. Someone who wants a legitimately libelous posting removed still needs to go through the courts.
Re:Seems a wrong decision to me. (Score:4, Interesting)
They sue for defamation, claiming untruth. The suit goes undefended, so the court orders the defamation removed.
The original suit was undefended, but Yelp had not been named as a defendant. Should a default judgement apply to a 3rd party? At least one justice thought it should not, and sided with Yelp on that basis.
So this case was really 3/1/3 rather than 4/3, and does not set any clear precedents.
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Because third-party claims were being applied, an entire industry sprung up about suing fake defendants [shootingth...enger.blog], who never defended themselves (if they even existed) to get a court order to remove material from websites like Yelp.
Another process was to take an existing court order, modify it for your purposes, then send it on to Google [washingtonpost.com] or Yelp or Amazon. Those companies never take the time to actually verify the order, so this was an effective way censor other people and prevent criticism from being made public.
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Wouldn't it make more sense to have the defendant remove or edit the review? Or does Yelp not support amendment a review after it was written?
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I think you're right, that's the sensible angle, leaving Yelp out of an interpersonal dispute. That should have been part of the decision. Failure to comply would result in contempt of court, and further penalties.
Assuming the user can retract a review, and also assuming the user can ever be found - since they didn't show for court, maybe they're out of state/country, or possibly even deceased. I don't know what happens in those cases, but given enough time, I'm sure someone will bring that to court, too.
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Should a default judgement apply to a 3rd party?
The problem with that reasoning is that then either Yelp must be forced to defend someone else's review, which seems absurd, or there is no way to have defamatory material removed from the internet even if you win in court.
More interesting is the question of why Yelp cares. If the court decided that the review was defamatory, even based on the claim not being defended, then what's the problem with removing it? One might suspect that the review was written by a Yelp employee after the business refused to pay
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This is the main problem though. Yelp was not a party to the lawsuit, so it's patently unfair to bind them to the judgment between two totally other parties.
What's more, these sort of third-party orders create the incentive for sloppy or outr
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Not at all. Happens all the time when an employer is forced to garnish someone's wages. Removing a post is not an unreasonable burden on Yelp.
"So you have an entire cottage industry of reputation-management companies filing real lawsuits against fake defendants in order to either request or demand takedown."
That has its own remedy. Courts don't look lightly on perjury or abuse o
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The employer garnishing wages is not taking any of his money, it's the employee's wages.
By contrast, forcing Yelp to remove content implicates their First Amendment rights to expressive speech.
The issue is that there is no party before the court to represent this interest. The only peopl
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Are you stupid, or trolling? The content was written by the user (who is therefore the copyright owner), and libel is not protected speech.
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Hi rude internet troll,
First, copyright and expression rights are not at all the same. The original author has granted Yelp the limited right to republish their work, just like I give /. the right to republish and distribute this comment.
Second, there is indeed considerable precedent in the US that the right to expressive speech protects the right of a publisher to re-publish the works of others. This includes Yelp. Here's some references:
Quantity of Copies of Books v. Kansas, 378 U.S. 205, 2
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Ah yes, the old "citing caselaw on topic" form of humor.
It's a very niche genre of comedy.
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The employer garnishing wages is not taking any of his money, it's the employee's wages.
The point is that the employer is required by a court order to take the employee's wages and remit them to the employee's creditor. The employer is a third party to the debt between the employee and creditor. It's really not at all different than ordering a defaming post be taken down - if anything, it's less of a burden.
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Yes, I get that. But it doesn't implicate any core constitutional rights held by the employer.
Honestly, I think the following passage from Richard v. Jefferson County, 517 U.S. 793, 798 (19
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So, let me toss out a car example, and see if it sticks. There's probably a better one, and I may be way off base, but here goes...
Suppose someone steals a vehicle, and then sells it to you. You unknowingly purchased the vehicle in good faith. Along come the cops, and they throw book at the thief. Do you get to keep the car?
In Yelp's case, it's reputation that's being stolen, and Yelp is taking that reputation, and making money from it, and refusing to return it to it's rightful status.
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Of course you don't get to keep the car. What you do get is notice a chance to challenge the finding in court that it is stolen.
Let me adjust you analogy to what actually happened. Alice accuses Bob of stealing a car and selling it to Carol. Alice sues Bob, and Bob doesn't even show up in court to defend it. The court grants Alice summary judgment and declares the car stolen. Now Alice comes up to Carol and demands the car.
Carol disagrees with the conclusion, or at least she isn't sure and would like to see
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IANAL, but I don't believe that Alice ever goes to Carol. The police would have confiscated the vehicle as evidence long before the trial. And, unless Carol was also charged, she might not even have an opportunity to be represented in the case against Bob. Now, Carol can go hire her own attorney, and attempt to get it back, but that's not happening until it's no longer needed as evidence, and likely not at all. Carol may have to make her own case with the prosecutor, police or in civil court.
All of that
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I mean, you were the one that decided on this analogy :-)
All that I really meant here was that Yelp has an interest in seeing the evidence that the post is libelous (which is may be!) and the opportunity to challenge it (or not, if they agree with the evidence).
And, as an added note, there is a process in the courts for adding a non-party to a case by serving them notice. Basically, you send them a formal letter with something like "hey, this case materially impacts your interests, deets included". That's l
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Fair enough...I don't have a horse in this race, I was just trying to talk through it to see what made sense.
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Well, just shit ... (Score:2)
... there goes a large portion of Yelp's business model.
Nice law firm you have there. Be a shame if it got a bad review.
Poor basis for a decision (Score:2)
A subjective opinion is protected by free speech. Now, if the bad review contained factual claims that could be proven as false, they I'd agree to removing the posts. But if I jump on Yelp and say "they were slovenly, slow, and the food was way too salty" then that's valid - it's all subjective opinion. Sucks that some might take it as damaging, but that's the way subjective reviews work.
Falling back on the 1996 law is bad precedent, because if that law changes, then this ruling is up for review. It sho
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If the bad review contained factual claims that could be proven as false, they I'd agree to removing the posts.
That is what happened.
posts against a San Francisco law firm that a judge determined were defamatory... falsely claiming that her firm failed to communicate with the client, among other things.
So it sounds like the claims were indeed proven false.
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Nothing of the kind was proven in court.
The person who wrote the allegedly defamatory posts did not respond to the lawsuit, so a default judgment was issued.
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Nothing of the kind was proven in court.
The person who wrote the allegedly defamatory posts did not respond to the lawsuit, so a default judgment was issued.
What's the difference, legally? Either way, a judgement was issued stating that the posts were untruthful.
I think that invitation ... (Score:4, Informative)
... the ruling "stands as an invitation to spread falsehoods on the internet without consequence."
I have an idea (Score:2)
Yelp for help? (Score:1)