Resellerratings.com and Free Speach

[Lemon]

I just read this article at MSNBC. This article talks about how several people have been sued for placing comments regarding their experience with an internet company much like we do at ResellerRatings.com. I had to sit back and think about some of the reviews I have done and I wonder if it will come back to haunt me. I usually watch what I say but I do know that other's may not.

[geekgrl]

I think you are ok if you state facts. Example: "I paid them and then they didn't ship it out for five months!" I think you can get in trouble if you state things that slander. Example: "Did you know that that stupid CEO of blah blah company is sleeping with another CEO of blah blah company and that's why they can't ship anythng on time."
hehe ok, so extreme examples.

[Pshawn5]

interesting stuff lemon...interesting stuff.

[Lemon]

I am sure most people are safe but that does not mean that some dirt bag of a site won't take you to court anyway. Even if you are very careful in what you say and stick with the facts it could cost you $$$ just to defend yourself.

[CERuppel]

Serious stuff indeed.

All a company has to do to stop the bad reviews is start the lawsuit. All they need is an injunction against the posted review, which they can probably get from the judge pretty quickly. Then just delay. They are using legal talent that is already part of the corparate structure, while you have to cough up for a lawyer out of pocket. Six monthes to a year later they drop the suit, or offer you a deal. By then the review is meaningless anyway, due to time.

Hope that makes sense. Still getting over the triple shift...

[Imperion1]

My thoughts on this.
Companies damage themselves even more when they start sueing people for stating their experiences with the site.

[Richard Cranium]

I can't believe this, surely the judge will counter-charge this idiot(oops)with trivial lawsuit and fine him.

BTW , I e-mailed the ScreenSavers @ TechTV.com about this story.

We already have very good examples of this kind of practice in some of the big hardware vendors and some of the small tech review sites. A while back I reqacll one guy getting spalled with an injunction by a graphic card manufacturer because he dared say their newest chipset was junk (and backed it up with some reasonable testing).

Go back further and we had a chip maker threatening legal action about a "supposed" error, possibly because they thought it was bad for their market share. Turned out the had to fix it anyway, but that didn't help the little guy who got trodden on along the way...

And should we talk about litigation tactics of a certain giant software company??

Doc, not all judges are as sensible as yours seems to be. And whether we like it or not deals are done between coporations, goverment and individuals all the time.

My suggestion is only make valid, reproducible comments based on fact and experience, and you should be reasonably safe. But remember there is risk in everything
Cheers
Mick

[sbp]

Chilling but not unexpected in today's ligation happy society. You have to wonder what next folks are going to start filing lawsuits over.

How about suing over for advice online that doesn't go right?

How about people suing each other over exchanges of angry words in forums?


Link to Dan Resler's original post on Aquatic Plant Digest
http://fins.actwin.com/aquatic-plant.../msg00211.html

[CERuppel]

The problem I have is with the fact, stated earlier, and simply taken as real (no question) by all of us. We have all read that fact and accepted it. Can you guess what I'm talking about?

It is the simple fact that we are a "Litagation Happy Society" (originally by sbp). How did we get here? And why?

Just my fevered mind playing games with me again, but the fact that we feel the need for this litagation and law suit gets to me.

Why can't we devise a social system in which adults act like adults?