Imagine that untrue allegations appear on an Internet site about your business tanking it. The site refuses to take them down, but instead offers to sell you a reputation management service to clean up the problem at a hefty price. The powerful free speech protections for the Internet have allowed this to happen in some cases. Joining me is Bloomberg Business Week writer June Lawrence, who wrote about rip Off Report
dot com and Dr John Pittman's battle with it. Do tell us about what happened to John Pittman, Hi, June, thanks for having me. Um So. Dr Pittman is a plastic surgeon and he practiced in Virginia and in two thousand thirteen, these complaints started to appear on rip Off
Report about him and his practice. And some of them had names on them, but they they don't know that they were real names, and some of them were just anonymous um and they all they said all these things, saying he was a drug addict, his business was tanking, he perjured himself in a trial against his ex wife and taken money for it. There's just a lot of really seen the allegations. So if you and they appeared high up in his in search results on his name
and on the name of his practice. Um, so if you're considering plastic surgery, you're probably not gonna go to him.
So and his business did tank after that. Now he has filed suit and saying that all of those out, all of those complaints, everything was false, but that when he approached the website called rip Off Report to tell them that it was false, then all of those were false and to ask them to have it taken down, they told him they couldn't do that, but they could charge him money and they would make them go away
and turn them positive. And in your in your article you say that according to in House Council a net Baby, we don't want to assume that because somebody wrote something really outlandish it's false, because it might be true. And once a complaint goes up, it stays there unless you pay this and tell us about this service that they offer. So there are ways they so they there are ways to make the to make the report go lower down
in search results. And I think what happens. You can pay rip off and to become a member of one of their service programs and they will sort of review your business themselves. Um, they'll come and do an inspection and take photos and then so that positive review replaces essentially it sits on top of the original negative review. UM, so that even though you still might have rip off
report in your search results. As a business, it would be something saying, oh, this is a trusted business and you should you the service, UM, and they have the customer's interests at heart. UM. Tell about tell me about the online free speech under section to thirty, which is really at the heart of this. Well, so all of this sounds a little bit, you know, from if you're just it sounds a little bit counterintuitive that this would be totally fine to do and also unfair, right, you know,
so something false? Why should Why shouldn't the website just take it down? UM? And the reason for that is that they don't have to under something called the Communications Decency Act Section to thirty. It was. It's a law pass It immunizes websites from content that third parties, but from content from third party. So basically, if you're a user and you put up the samatory complaint on this website, the website is not liable for that. You could be UM,
but the website is not. UM. But you know, can be very can be very complicated for businesses to respond to this because you know, in a situation with report, they won't take it down, um, so you basically have to pay them even if it's fall So it sounds like a nightmare. Are there any legal avenues? Are their attorneys general looking into this? Are there any lawsuits that have worked? Well? There there are lawsuits there. Judges seem to be considering situations in which Section to thirty might
not apply. Now section is still remains a very powerful protection, and and that's good for the internet. Um, but um, there are cases in which judges are considering, well, um, when might other laws afly like criminal statutes or something, when might the website actually be liable for what they've
put for you know, the content up there. And and in one particular case that's important for Dr Pittman's lawsuit, the judge in Iowa it was it's not a it's not a final ruling, but he did find in a preliminary ruling that m rip offs section to the Section to thirty immunity would not apply in that case because ripoffs essentially had been too involved, um in creating the content, like they had paid allegedly paid the man who wrote a lot of the reports and may also have been
involved in writing the reports. Um. Now that is something that the website denies, but the judge did say that, you know, at trial, more likely than not ripoffs would not get Section two thirty immunity. Well, so this is as you said, this is really complex and it's a nightmarish situation that you paint in your article for the people who are subjected to this, And if you want to read more about this, go to Bloomberg Business Week,
because it is it's really complex and very interesting. Thank you so much, June Lawrence from Bloomberg Business Week for being with us here on Bloomberg Law. That's it for this edition of Bloomberg Law. We'll be back tomorrow at one pm Wall Street Time. Thanks to our technical director Chris try Comey and our producer David Suckerman. Bloomberg Markets with Carol Master and Corey Johnson starts right now on Bloomberg Radio. This is Bloomberg. I'm June Grosso. Thanks for listening.
Stay tuned for Carol Master and Corey Johnson. This is Bloomberg