FYI – There's a legal storm brewing in Cali that threatens to destroy online free speech Tech giants and rights groups have flooded the California Supreme Court with a dozen friend-of-the court briefs pleading for the reversal of a defamation ruling that threatens online speech protections. First, rewind to 2013, when a woman by the name of Ava Bird allegedly posted a negative review of San Francisco attorney Dawn …
"There is a large and growing community of [shitty] businesses and [questionable, unlicensed, and unmonitored] consultants looking for legal tools to shut down online [complaints that only two people see]"
FTFY. Normal businesses, involved mainly with running their business, usually do not give two craps about Yelp reviews; 1) because they are usually positive, and more importantly 2) they are meaningless tributes/gripes where a real review could be, 3) only assholes Yelp, 4) see South Park if you think you want to become a Yelp reviewer, especially if you are unfortunate enough to be a (saggy ass, sad) food critic.
The 'reputation management' frauds fail to understand the Streisand Effect and human behavior. Suing over an honest opinion runs the risk of a Streisand Effect. The other part is anyone with any sense is always wary of the a new store/provider. People tend to use the same places/providers because they are comfortable. Online reviews are one tool to help make decision but not the only tool. Many use experience, advise of others, 'the smell test', as well as online reviews before making a choice.
'Smell test' is when something does not seem right.
Except there is no Streisand effect because nobody ever finds out.
Yelp/Amazon/Ebay just get a million automated emails telling them to remove any negative reviews, which they do rather than be taken to court
You just never see any rating less than 5* on the web anymore
not MY fault - the DemoRats are running rampant and Republicans are outnumbered. They're taxing and spending and regulating us to death, while simultaneously making it easy for their trial l[aw]yer friends and contributors to do all this crap to us...
The Cali-fornicate-you legislature is ONE! OF! THE! MOST! CORRUPT! INSTITUTIONS! ON! THE! PLANET!!! It's like a tin-horn dictatorship these days. And the lyers just throw sueballs around to increase their own income.
I might have agreed with that diagnosis except that even back in the days of Ronald Reagan republican California there were still legally-retarded laws being passed. I'd suggest that it's in the DNA of California to imagine you can legislate your way to happiness.
"Two words: California Emissions."
I complain about CARB rules a lot when I get my car checked, but I have to admit they worked; LA's air quality is visibly better than when I was a kid. So I can only be so critical. Without them LA would probably have Beijing's Blade Runner-esque opaque brown air by now.
You do realize that this was a court ruling, not something passed by the legislature, right?
Likely the whole unfortunate legal precedent would have been avoided if the original client had shown up for court. If they don't show, the court really has little choice but to rule against them.
If they don't show, the court really has little choice but to rule against them
Allegedly, the complaint was notified by "substituted service" - process was supposedly served on a third party who claims not to have seen the target of the lawsuit for several months. The California Courts website says:
“Substituted service” is not a very reliable type of service because the court does not know for sure that the person that had to be served actually received the paperwork.
Perhaps anyone dealing with the Hassell Law Group should be conscious of the possibility of nominative determinism.
Only if they're incompetent or don't do their job of representing their client to the best of their ability. Personally, if someone with power & money decided to make my life a nightmare in a way that the judicial system could handle, I'd want a decent lawyer to take my case, not try to argue it myself...
As it should be in any country that wants to be thought to have a (reasonably) honest legal system.*
*UK "Super Injunctions" where the defendants did not realize it was happening and had no right to tell their side of the case (often that they had proof the lying scumbag was in fact a lying scumbag).
This ruling is likened to our FISA Court. Where proceedings are so secret no one but the filing person knows what is going on. While I admit there is a need for the court, I hope it never expands to anyhthing but espionage.
People quoted in the article massively overstate the implications of the EU so-called "right to be forgotten". It is really very mild. No content is removed as a result of the Google Spain ruling. Only links to content are removed from search results, and then only when the person's name is in the search terms. It's much less invasive than DMCA takedown requests, and Google complies with millions of these and hardly breaks a sweat.
Indeed. They can, of course, be used as precedent for the treatment of future default judgements, but there's so much of that already, and the established rules are so clear on how they work, that any one new case will have next to zero weight.
(Caveat lector: I'm speaking here as the winner of a default judgement, although later events made it a hollow victory at best.)
If the process was cheap and affordable or free for the masses then these judgements would be fought, but while it requires "thousands of dollars" it is limited to the rich, who can therefore get away with anything and also rewrite history. After all they must be right because they are rich.
Obviously there is scope for an internet judge judy or whatever whereby an independent panel of internet users review supposed libel actions and decide whether the "review" goes to far. That would open processes up to the masses who cannot afford litigation in any country,
where an online opinion outlet claims "it's a private organization and can choose to block or promote what it wants" and free speech protections are explicitly denied to individuals when that Corporation decides they don't fit Corporate goals?
If free speech rights "don't exist" on their platforms, then they can't really claim that being told to remove content is a violation of free speech laws, can they?
I'm sure there are other legal arguments that would be more appropriate and effective, but as these particular companies can and do modify, edit, and delete user generated content for their own agendas and deliberately tell users to essentially "f**k off we're a private organization and can do what we want" it seems they've already set precedent and denied themselves first amendment protection.
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