Nothing happens. If the law is on your side then what do you have to worry about? Are you suggesting every website administrator is revealing privacy details of its website users and/or wasting hours contemplating to dig up ip addresses? Basically anyone who disagree with any content on the net can hire a 500/hr lawyer and get what he/she wants? I think you may go slightly overboard here. The law is designed to exactly prevent such abuse. It is ridiculous to even start thinking to furnish a request by anyone to reveal privacy information of people that express their own opinions. A simple disclaimer on your site that those ratings are expression of personal opinion would already suffice.
Generally in civil matters, the party with the most funds devoted to a case wins, law notwithstanding. Baron does not seem to be saying that he will not restore broker rankings but that he is working to provide it in a way that will reduce communications to him from brokers unhappy about certain postings.
there will not even be a hearing period. No judge will even hear such ridiculous case. No lawyer in the world will be able to drag a website blog owner before a court (or otherwise engage in even verbal exchanges) on the basis of the voicing of the site's user's own opinions. I admit I am not a US resident or citizen but hosted a blog website in Europe in a country with much less freedom granted to the freedom of speech of individuals. I was approached a number of times by lawyers. I ignored them and never heard back. It takes feeding rats to enable rats to survive.
Hi Baron, thanks for such a quick reply... well that explains a lot... and am also pretty sure that the dodgier brokers are the most aggressive with legal threats and stuff... That s great you are working on a new release, maybe based on ratings (1 out of 10, or out of 5 etc on several criteria) and that would remove the negative review suing problem (altho it would still be nice to have reviews with explanations for those who want to do so...). It would be much more "actionnable" to the ET user than forum threads that get lost and are sometimes too long to read all again... It would also, as stated by a previous user, use much better the size of ET community and by the law of the large numbers, would make it harder for companies to prop up their reviews, or sink a competitor's. To avoid fake reviews problem, in addition to the natural protection from ET size, you could also weight users responses by Elite Trader status (the more posts/time on ET, the more weighting for that user reviews), and date. Last but not least, I am very surprised a company can ask you for personal details of a writer of a bad review... (not like if ONE creates a website to spill dirt on someone...) Agree, on the lawyer BS stuff tho... If you ignore, more usually than not.. those letters have no legal basis and are just an easy way to scare people off... Cost next to nothing to send... If there is a ET user who is a lawyer, am sure they would be willing to give you some advice.
Hmmm. Wonder how TripAdvisor and all the rest work? I've even heard some sketchy accusations of Yelp, as in when you are a member you get mostly positive reviews, but if you cancel, those positive reviews come down. But I would probably agree with you in your case. Doesn't seem to be worth the hassle unless you could easily do whatever those other sites do to tame the herd of blood-thirsty lawyers.
Ok, well let me tell you want really happens when you ignore everything. A guy I know just went through this whole process. You get a request from an attorney to remove some reviews and have the user's info sent over, then you ignore it. About a two weeks later you get another letter, which basically says the same thing. You ignore that too. Then a few weeks later, you get a threatening letter stating that by leaving the libelous reviews up, more damage is being harmed to the client. You press the ignore button and keep on about your day. Then you get some certified mail a month later saying that you're being sued for willfully contributing to the damage caused to the attorneys client because you refuse to take the review down or comply with any requests. You ignore that too. Then you get a discovery subpoena asking for all sorts of documentation about your business and review process, but hey, you've made it this far so why not press the ignore button again? The hearing/trial happens and the client automatically wins because you didn't bother to show up. Then you get a court order demanding the review be pulled down and that you must pay damages and attorney fees. The guy I mentioned earlier ignored that too, and guess where he's at right now? He's in jail for contempt of court with a $50k bond. Now the legal system might work different where you live, but here in the U.S., that's the way it works.
Here's the difference: MONEY. It's one thing to give a bad review of a restaurant because of $20 meal you had. It's another dimension when you've blown out your $40k account and are now submitting a super emotional and scathing review of your broker essentially blaming them for the loss. Where the problem really exists is that some people just take the language too far. They use words like "ripoff" and "fraud", and in some cases they even mention the names of specific people in the company calling them "con artists", "liars", etc. That's the kind of language that I would always get letters on because that language does far more damage to the firm's reputation and future business than any loss that the reviewer suffered himself. In some cases, I would find over 10 negative reviews that were submitted by a user for various brokerage firms, and then discover that the person worked for a competing brokerage and that all those reviews were b.s. I'd rather spend my days doing more constructive things on the site than stay buried in arbitration between two parties I don't even know.
I agree. That's how the legal system works here in the US. And having the law clearly on your side doesn't actually matter much. Judges don't just throw stuff out even if obviously frivolous. You have to defend yourself. It's different in Europe.
This just serves as proof that the review business is extremely delicate. Even with algorithms and stringent controls, TripAdvisor still got sued and fined.