Another Attempt At Using the Courts To Suppress an Online Review 180
gandhi_2 writes with this excerpt from the SF Chronicle:
"A San Francisco chiropractor has sued a local artist over negative reviews published on Yelp, the popular Web site that rates businesses. Christopher Norberg, 26, of San Francisco posted the first review in November 2007 after visiting Steven Biegel at the Advanced Chiropractic Center on Valencia Street. In the six-paragraph write-up, Norberg criticized Biegel's billing practices and said the chiropractor was being dishonest with insurance companies. ...The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a local nonprofit that supports free speech online, is considering helping with Norberg's defense. Matt Zimmerman, an attorney with the group, said Biegel will get far more negative publicity from filing the lawsuit than from a bad review on Yelp. He said the foundation is seeing more and more cases of people trying to use the courts because they're unhappy with postings on the Internet."
Re:Long history (Score:4, Informative)
There is a difference though. Your right to free speech ends when you knowingly make false statements about me in a way that damages my reputation or the reputation of my business. It is one thing to leave negative feedback, but it is another to accuse someone of breaking the law without any proof in a public forum, which is exactly what happened here.
Re:Chiropractors are quacks anyway (Score:5, Informative)
this was modded +5 insightful????? (Score:2, Informative)
So much for the open minded people here.
FWIW I've had my back, ankles and knees helped by a good chiropractor. (sports injurys) There are many different schools of chiropractic care.
Pick the right one.
You wouldn't go to a neurosurgeon for a broken arm would you?
Re:Chiropractors are quacks anyway (Score:5, Informative)
But quackery is relevant here, because the doctor should have used a PR person to help him rebut the detractor's claims and used the threat of libel to make Yelp append the rebuttal directly to the criticism so they had to be viewed together. It would have been less costly all around. Better to defuse your detractor as a crackpot/quack than to sue him and give him legitimacy.
Is the doctor within his rights? If the claims made by Norberg actually are false, then he is. Was this the best way to handle things? Nope.
Re:Long history (Score:3, Informative)
Here's a link [sftc.org] to the filings in the case. When I look at the language that's the subject of the complaint, it looks like the kind of rant that goes on in many business disputes without usually going to court - read and judge for yourself. To me, it seems clear that the plaintiff is very touchy about third party payment issues as many chiropractors are and wants to intimidate his former patient into silence. Also, if you look at the history, it's clear that the defendant ignored multiple notifications about the action and had to back down in order to avoid a summary judgement against him - not a good move on his part.
Re:Long history (Score:4, Informative)
Litigation wasn't the chiropractor's first step. He contacted the poster a couple of weeks later to persuade him to change or remove the post, and tried to resolve the matter for a year before deciding to sue. I know it is unfashionable on /. to read the article but everything I just stated is there :-P
Re:EFF is nice to have around (Score:4, Informative)
Except it wasn't domain squatting.
As I said, non-payment of services rendered.
Had I gone about purchasing those domains in bad-faith and using them for commercial purposes of my own, or attempted to sell them in an underhanded way, then yes it would have been squatting. Since that time, the domains have expired from my ownership, and some have been purchased by other 'domain-farms' and are just being used to run ads. And, some of them are still to this day unregistered.
This behavior is the reason I stopped working for them, as most of their cases were arbitration cases involving contract disputes. I make no claim as to the legality of what was involved, only that when I discovered this, I ceased doing any business with them based on my own personal decisions.
I was more than a little irritated that the letter demanded me turning over to them for free, and under the threat of criminal prosecution, domains they had not purchased in the first place. And like I stated above, the domains have lapsed out of my ownership, and the ones that havent been 'sniped' by others the second they expired, are STILL sitting available to purchase this very day.
So with the above information, I hope you are more clear on this. I appreciate you using the word 'if' in your question. The fact that some of those domains are now available, and have been for almost a year, shows to me that they were more interested in getting something for nothing rather than any claims of copyright.
The domains are unregistered and available right now, for them to purchase. They have been for almost a year. Do you still think they were interested in the domains?
Re:Chiropractors are quacks anyway (Score:5, Informative)
They are medical doctors, so your insurance should cover them, and have chiropractor training so they can do more than either alone. The other difference seems to be the approach.
Case in point. My wife injured her neck many years ago. A chiropractor recommended treatment and a "maintenance" plan to keep things "aligned". She declined both. The physiatrist asked for X-rays and medical history a week in advance of the appointment, then examined her for an hour, testing and explaining what was wrong, and then fixed her with one manipulation and an injection. No repeat visits required, unless "you injure yourself again". My wife went back once two years later after she slipped rock climbing.
If you're in the Virginia Beach, VA area I recommend Dr. Lisa Barr.
Disclaimer: Your mileage may vary.
Re:this was modded +5 insightful????? (Score:5, Informative)
This is basically spot-on. My mother worked for a variety of chiropractors in the area as a receptionist, because she had experience with them. She also suffers from pretty severe asthma. Each one wanted her to come off her meds and rely on adjustments to help with the asthma. They "prohibited" their workers from getting flu shots (which are important for asthma sufferers), insisting they be replaced by adjustments. They routinely recommend parents avoid vaccinating their children in any way.
Eventually she got fed up and took a job at a different type of medical facility. The take-away for me was that the majority of chiropractors appear to have little knowledge of medicine, and should not be trusted for anything beyond glorified massages.
Re:this was modded +5 insightful????? (Score:5, Informative)
Do not equate it as rigorously tested science or medicine though.
Actually, chiropractics has been tested for a number of complaints. The medical consensus is that it "may be a useful approach in alleviating pain for a very limited set of disorders associated with the back or spine". It is known to be utterly useless for a great many others, such as arthritis, high blood pressure, or ear infections.
Nevertheless, chiropractors routinely claim to be able to treat such conditions. For example, 75% of those approached in one survey claimed to be able to treat arthritis and/or high blood pressure. In another survey, 80% of chiropractors claimed to be able to treat ear infections in children.
http://www.csicop.org/si/2008-01/thyer.html [csicop.org]
This is quite disturbing, as it suggests that only 20-25% of chiropractors were aware of the limits of their therapies. The vast majority were willing to misapply chiropractics in potentially harmful ways.
Re:Long history (Score:3, Informative)
Lawyer: Let me rephrase that. Let's say you put some faux fur in an artwork. If one of your clients falsely claimed that artwork contained the fur of baby harp seals...
OBJECTION! Asks for speculation about a situation that never happened.
Judge: Sustained.
(You can't just go off into nonsense tangets in a court of law. You need to stick to the facts of the case.)