{"id":4,"date":"2012-12-12T23:29:43","date_gmt":"2012-12-12T23:29:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/theoandjohn\/?p=4"},"modified":"2012-12-12T23:31:58","modified_gmt":"2012-12-12T23:31:58","slug":"the-problem-with-contracting-free-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/theoandjohn\/2012\/12\/12\/the-problem-with-contracting-free-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"The Problem with Contracting Free Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

It seems hard to believe that in this day and age of openness and over-sharing that free speech is still being threatened on the Internet, and yet a recent decision by a Virginia judge continues to extend this age-old trend.<\/a>\u00a0 A woman named Jane Perez is currently being sued by a former contractor for posting a bad review on Yelp\u2014if she loses, Perez could be liable for up to $750,000.\u00a0 Given the fact that the Virginia judge just issued a preliminary injunction in favor of the contractor<\/a>, it seems that she might have to pay up after all\u2014and for what?\u00a0 Posting negative comments online about services she was unhappy with.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The only good thing to come out of the judge\u2019s ruling this December was the fact that he refused to hold the actual websites\u2014Yelp and Angie\u2019s List\u2014liable, thanks to that ever-useful Section 230. \u00a0But despite not touching that section, the judge\u2019s decision is still incredibly damaging to advocates of free speech.\u00a0 If his decision is upheld in the higher courts, the precedent it sets for online speech could immensely damage the current community online.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Consider the consequences of his decision: as the law stands now, online reviews of services are held as opinion, protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution.\u00a0 This decision treats such reviews as statements of fact, able to be sued, liable to be treated as libel.\u00a0 In essence, this decision could be interpreted as allowing online reviewers to be sued if they have an opinion the service provided is unhappy with\u2014they didn\u2019t like your product and said so on the Internet? Sue them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think the chilling consequences of this decision can be overstated.\u00a0 If it becomes common practice to sue individuals over reviews they wrote on the Internet, it will be common practice to no longer write reviews.\u00a0 Considering that millions of customers these days rely upon other customer reviews in order to make shopping decisions, decisions to these could cripple the community currently in place, a loss for all but the service providers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Now, it\u2019s true that some of the things Jane Perez said had elements of fact in them.\u00a0 She alleged that the contractor stole jewelry from her home, damaged it, and did not perform the work she contracted him to do.<\/a>\u00a0 Statements of fact, certainly, and if they were published in a newspaper, printed for all to see, her contractor have grounds to sue her for libel, providing of course, the facts were untrue.\u00a0 But is it wise to treat Internet speech as the same as printed media, to treat online commenters as subject to the same penalties as newspaper corporations?\u00a0 I think not, and I think that, if we do so, we may find that there are far fewer online commentators, and far fewer useful comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seems hard to believe that in this day and age of openness and over-sharing that free speech is still being threatened on the Internet, and yet a recent decision by a Virginia judge continues to extend this age-old trend.\u00a0 A woman named Jane Perez is currently being sued by a former contractor for posting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5391,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/theoandjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/theoandjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/theoandjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/theoandjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5391"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/theoandjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/theoandjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/theoandjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions\/7"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/theoandjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/theoandjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/theoandjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}