The Internet has made it easier than ever for disgruntled consumers and employees to vent their opinions online, whether by creating their own website like www.[name of company]sucks.com or using a site like Ripoff Report. Often these critics choose to remain anonymous. Naturally, companies don’t tend to like this kind of attention, and frequently ask us what can be done about it.
A new article in the New York Law Journal examines efforts by businesses to sue the posters and the website hosts to quell such speech, and concludes that litigation is rarely the best answer. Even when a post might actually be legally defamatory, reaching out to the consumer/former employee or being more proactive in pushing the company’s message online may be better (and cheaper) solutions. Given that the Communications Decency Act has rendered Internet service providers immune from liability, and courts have generally declined to force those providers to disclose the identities of users that post critical or defamatory material, it may be just the cost of doing business today that company deal with some amount of online criticism.
UPDATE: Just to show that law firms are not immune to this problem, the New Jersey Law Journal reports that Levinson Axelrod has sued its former associate, Edward Heyburn, for creating and maintaining a gripe site aimed specifically at the law firm. Heyburn apparently did not take too well at being fired by the firm, and created the site to mock pretty much everything about his former employer, including the appearance of several partners. The firm has alleged claims of cybersquatting and unfair competition, among others, but has interestingly not alleged defamation. Heyburn has no intention of removing the gripe site, and reports a huge increase of traffic. This case may prove the limitations of litigation, but we will continue to monitor the matter.
RipoffReport.com is the pits in particular. I had a case where I was on the verge of settling (complete with confidentiality and mutual non-disparagement no less). Our opponent posted a bunch of vile misstatements on there and then signed the agreement.
We were able to get an agreed upon statement that they posted in the comments section, but it was impossible to get the page down and it still pops up in google. Unfortunately, the remedies to attack the problem are not efficient as you note in your post.
In my view, the biggest problem, as you note, is the simple fact that once something is posted on a site like Ripoff Report, it’s pretty much there forever. Even a posted mea culpa doesn’t prevent the offending material from showing up in searches.
Isn’t it a bit of an overstatement, though, to say “courts have generally declined to force . . . providers to disclose the identities of users that post critical or defamatory material”? A couple of recent, well-publicized decisions have gone the other way, and this may well be a sign that the pendulum is swinging on this.
That doesn’t mean I disagree with the overall thrust of your post — well encapsulated by the headline. I don’t; I tell prospective clients the same thing at least once a week, it seems.
On the other hand, when you have an outfit such as Ripoff Report taking pride in the fact that it will resolutely stand by its “right” to publish, indefinitely, any defamatory material, sometimes even a “mere” court judgment could be a useful antidote, combined with some basic online reputation-management measures.