Remember Yelp and other 'business review' sites where you can anonymously review a business?
There are a lot of reputation management consultants who are making a good income protecting clients from unscrupulous review posters. However, that just may be changing—big time.
Many quality Quad State businesses hire reputation management consultants who 'have their back' against bad reviews that may be coming from anyone from competitors to people who just don't like their business.
Many Quad State owners have heard the Hadeed Carpet Cleaning ads when they travel to the Washington, DC area. He's everywhere—radio, TV, Internet, direct mail, you name it.
Posters who review a business, before the ruling, did not have to identify themselves. Now they do. The case could continue to be litigated, but this case is looked on as a victory for small business owners of all stripes.
Internet Case Law, Meet the New Ruling
In a decision that could reshape the rules for online consumer reviews, a Virginia court has ruled that the popular website Yelp must turn over the names of the seven reviewers who anonymously criticized the prominent Hadeed business.
Mr. Hadeed plans, with ruling in hand, to sue the posters for defamation.
The case revolves around negative feedback against Virginia-based Hadeed Carpet Cleaning. The owner, Joe Hadeed, claimed that the users leaving negative reviews were actually not real customers of his business. This fact would violate Yelp’s terms of service.
His counsel issued a subpoena demanding the names of seven anonymous reviewers, and a judge in Alexandria ruled that Yelp had to comply.
Does This Week's Ruling Also Hamper First Amendment Rights?
The Virginia Court of Appeals agreed that it does not. The Appeals Court ruled that the comments were not protected First Amendment opinions. And if the Yelp users were not customers they were making false claims.
Reputation management consultants will still be needed until the ruling and resulting rulings filter into society.
“The Virginia statute makes the judge a gatekeeper to decide whether or not there’s a common-sense reason for someone in our position to get this information,” said Raighne Delaney, a lawyer at the Arlington firm Bean, Kinney & Korman who represented Joe Hadeed. “In order for someone like Joe Hadeed to find out who these people are, he has to explain his case, and if he can convince the judge that there might be a real lawsuit against this person, the judge can then say, ‘Yes, you can get this information.’”
But Paul Levy, a lawyer with Public Citizen, the group Ralph Nader founded, who represented Yelp, said the ruling might be concerning to consumers.
“Hadeed really did nothing to justify the need for the identity of the Does in this case,” Mr. Levy said. “It’s going to make it more difficult for the marketplace of ideas to get valuable information about companies.”
Mr. Hadeed deferred most of his reflection on the case to his attorney. He said through court documents that he believed most of the critiques came from a small number of users, non-customers, who were creating fake accounts to post multiple reviews.
The Quad State Business Journal reminds readers that just as a well-placed cut of the tongue can start a firestorm of controversy, so it is with those few who wish harm on a business through the Internet. Some do damage to business reputations just for fun it seems.
“Yelp said that all the posts had different IP addresses, but how many IP addresses does one person have between all their devices?” The attorney for Mr. Hadeed continued, “It would be easy to create a number of different fake accounts.”
Court Ruling: Unmasking the Perpetrators of Potentially Libelous Anonymous Comments
Yelp’s attorneys cited legal standards established across the country for identifying people who post anonymous comments and claimed that Mr. Hadeed and his business had not met those requirements. The court noted, however, that the state has its own standards for “unmasking” those who make potentially libelous anonymous comments online and agreed with the Circuit Court for the City of Alexandria, said that those standards had indeed been met.
“We are disappointed that the Virginia Court of Appeals has issued a ruling that fails to adequately protect free speech rights on the Internet, and which allows businesses to seek personal details about website users — without any evidence of wrongdoing — in efforts to silence online critics,” a Yelp spokesman said in a statement. “Other states require that plaintiffs lay out actual facts before such information is allowed to be obtained, and have adopted strong protections in order to prevent online speech from being stifled by those upset with what has been said. We continue to urge Virginia to do the same.”
In a 25-page majority opinion, Judge William G. Petty said, “Generally, a Yelp review is entitled to First Amendment protection because it is a person’s opinion about a business that they patronized.
Judge Petty continued: “The anonymous speaker has the right to express himself on the Internet without the fear that his veil of anonymity will be pierced for no other reason than because another person disagrees with him.”
The court established the fact that the First Amendment rights do not cover deliberately false statements and agreed that the evidence that Mr. Hadeed provided proved sufficient reason to think the users might not have been customers.
The court's opinion stated: “the reviewer was never a customer of the business, then the review is not an opinion; instead, the review is based on a false statement” and not subject to any First Amendment protection.
The anonymous posters were revealed as non-customers when Mr. Hadeed said his company could not “match defendants’ reviews with actual customers in its database.”
The Quad State Business Journal has stated several times in its site that in order for businesses to bolster their reputation management capabilities, a solid database must be maintained.
A dissenting judge wrote however: “A business subject to critical commentary should not be permitted to force the disclosure of the identity of anonymous commentators simply by alleging that those commentators may not be customers because they cannot identify them in their database.”
Multiple Media Joined In the Case On Yelp's Side
Several well-known media outlets filed friend-of-the-court briefs including The Washington Post, Gannet Co, The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the American Society of News Editors all filed in support of Yelp.
Public Citizen's Mr. Levy said the case was the first he had seen in which the court ordered revelation of information on anonymous users.
Mr. Levy declared, “I’ve litigated in many cases for 14 years, and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen an appellate court order the identification, the first case in which I’ve represented a party in which we thought the Doe was clearly protected and the court said they were not,” he said.
The Yelp Ruling Warns Posters to Follow a Review Site's Rules
Yelp's estimated 39+ million reviews on local businesses remains a popular place for praise or scorn of local businesses. However, if reviewers are not actual customers, thereby breaking the rules of the site, as per the anonymous posters in the Yelp case, they can be found out.
Many a Quad State business, otherwise very customer-centric, has tasted the impact of an anonymous reviewer.
The Quad State Business Journal interviewed a reputation management consultant on the Business Solutions Network site who, in turn, spoke on terms of anonymity.
“Too many businesses are losing customers and revenue by not having at least a slight effort by a reputation management person. I'm not looking to get more business, but that is a fact. You will see a lot of the rep management firms make hay out of this ruling. And they should,” he concluded.”
Mr. Hadeed has a second business, Hadeed oriental Rug Cleaning where he has met with the same issue. In this instance the hidden reviews are roughtly split between negative and positive reviewers.
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Original post: www.QuadStateBusinessJournal.com
To find a local reputation management consultant: www.TheBusinessSolutionNetwork.com
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