"Your statements are false, defamatory, libelous, and slanderous, constitute trade libel and place Mediabridge and its products in a false light," the verbose letter from the law firm reads in part." (read more)
Thursday, May 8, 2014
National Journal: The next time you write an online review, be careful. You might get sued.
"That's what could happen to a Florida man who left a negative review about an Internet router he purchased. According to his Tuesday post on Reddit, where he's asking for legal advice, he received a letter from a law firm in Philadelphia threatening to sue him for an "illegal campaign to damage, discredit, defame, and libel" the company that makes the router.
"Your statements are false, defamatory, libelous, and slanderous, constitute trade libel and place Mediabridge and its products in a false light," the verbose letter from the law firm reads in part." (read more)
"Your statements are false, defamatory, libelous, and slanderous, constitute trade libel and place Mediabridge and its products in a false light," the verbose letter from the law firm reads in part." (read more)
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16 comments:
I don't see a problem. If he lied, they are right. If he didn't then he has a counter suit now for defamation, and Mediabridge has nice deep pockets.
I also think it pretty bad press for the company, and a dumb move. They will get far worse treatment from people online now than they ever did from this guy. Prepare for a beatdown.
It is just a bunch of lawyers trying to justify writing letters at $400 an hour. How can you win a suit unless they guy wrote a review that is objectively false? If he writes what his experience was...well all they managed to do by suing him is focus more attention on his complaints.
And how does this help the client exactly? It will not quash complaints, it will encourage more.
This is one massive fail: For the client that hired this Bozo Attorney.
I'm with bag.
Unless the guy said or did something to indicate he wasn't telling the truth, he's got a First Amendment right to say the product is lousy.
Evi L. Bloggerlady said...
It is just a bunch of lawyers trying to justify writing letters at $400 an hour.
It's make-work in a bad legal economy (unless you live in D.C., the center of the bubble). But note that bubbles don't have centers -- only hollow cores.
You guys are huge idealists. A woman as powerful as Oprah couldn't stop the cattle industry from shutting her mouth down, but this guy's widespread sympathy will somehow prevent the richer company from getting somewhere with their case? I didn't know y'all were that democratic.
Welcome to the real world of corporate power. Hello.
...bubbles don't have centers -- only hollow cores.
Filled with gas.
Oprah's mouth has not been shut down. That or her trainer quit.
A doctor acquaintance mentioned he found a bad - and nasty - review of him on one of those ubiquitous MD-rating websites. Although there was nothing in the review that he could use to verify whether the reviewer was even a patient, his continuing sluthing brought him nowhere, except after a long time to get the website to take down the review. His practice at the time was fairly new, he knew all his clients, and none were apparently dissatisfied. He feared something like that could bankrupt him.
Sites like Tripadvisor are full of bad hotel reviews, often given by competing hotels.
I give bad reviews about GE appliances on Amazon every time my dishwasher goes south. I don't think I'm going to put them out of business, though I wish I could.
It would be interesting to see what he actually wrote about the product. The Reddit posting has been deleted and the original Amazon review was also altered.
Here's the thing. Internet ratings sites are a racket. Yelp told me that if I signed up for their "special membership benefits" the negative reviews would be put down at the bottom of the page. I know several positive reviews were deleted because I didn't knuckle under and pay them.
It is no different then when Joey Gallo came by and said if you paid him twenty dollars a month he wouldn't throw a brick through your window.
The Reddit posting has been deleted and the original Amazon review was also altered.
The chilling effect is its own reward. Go Corporate America!!!
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who did their part to make money the most important consideration in U.S. society. Thank you!
Here's the thing. Internet ratings sites are a racket
Plus, I know for a fact that Inga or whatever incarnation she is wearing at the moment, has been routinely stalking Spinelli's wife Leslyn and posting negative reviews on her Amazon books pages. Making accusations of all sorts of things like wife beating, cyberstalking. All the same sick obsessions that she has displayed here and especially at TOP. Her nasty reviews which have nothing to do with the book have been taken down because they have been reported as abuse.
I guess the moral is that people will make stuff up on the internet. Instead of threatening a lawsuit, the modem company could have protested that the review was abusive or have someone counter the negative review with a bunch of positive ones.
I look at the reviews since I buy a lot through Amazon, but really don't take them all at face value.
Yelp's whole "preference/loyalty-building" methodologies are incredibly suspect, and yet they're either so damn useful or ubiquitous I often can't help glancing at them. (EIther those things or Google reviews that pop up first). It's pretty pathetic that as the most popular/earliest online review source, they've whored out so completely. Viva la America!
What I have seen that I have some respect for is when owners get back into the mix. A decent mechanic I know took the time to respond to a pretty negative review, but he knew the customer and asked about and/or reviewed details of the issue. He also went to the point of letting her know that if she was dissatisfied in any way that he had any power over, he'd fix it. That's a pretty decent thing to do and probably the best and unfortunately only answer to these problems.
But this is America and we like our space and our detachment from others so most people wouldn't even fathom learning how to both deal with assholes effectively and protect one's reputation at the same time like that. This is a country of rugged individualists and we're all at war with each other, Baby! Commerce is a battlefield! Pat Benatar didn't know it wasn't just love where it gets fought out!
The letter.
The above states the claims the guy made in his Amazon review. The one that probably pissed them off was that the router was a rebranded copy of a much cheaper router made by another company.
1. I don't discount the possibility that the reviewer was in cahoots with a Mediabridge competitor. Trust no one.
2. I don't discount his claim that Mediabridge was puffing the reviews. Trust no one.
3. Other than a similar appearance he didn't offer anything to back up the cheap copy claim.
4. It's not a lie if you believe it, but it could still be libel if a court wishes to go there with respect to internet comments and reviews. If they do, I could be in a lot of trouble.
Poor Florida Man. He is the Job of our time.
It's not a lie if you believe it, but it could still be libel if a court wishes to go there with respect to internet comments and reviews. If they do, I could be in a lot of trouble.
Since today's SCOTUS and cons running the place believe in money and fighting fire with fire, why not just create a business wholly devoted to the enterprise of critical reviews. People could comment there and the website could countersue any threatening litigants by saying they were libelling THEIR company. Its stated purpose would be informing and empowering consumers, not attacking, and being sued would be an infringement on ITS livelihood. Does Consumer Reports ever get sued? Successfully?
I'd like to sue the voters and other schmucks who fought for a system so disempowering of the rights of the consumer.
There's a lesson here for all of us.
When there's someone you don't like and you want to tear them a new asshole and they are a powerful entity either financially or politically, as opposed to, for example, Lem, then be oblique and indefinite in your criticisms so as to maintain some level of deniability.
For graduate level instruction in this methodology I recommend this website.
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