Ripoff Report is a site that we’ve discussed a hardly any times before, as it’s dealt with <a href=”http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091223/0204297483.shtml”>a bunch of lawsuits</a> — all of which it has successfully defended itself against — from organizations upset that users wrote negative reviews on the site. Of direction, as you should know, Ripoff Reports has a strong Section 230 safe harbor defense: it’s not making the content, and thus, is not liable. However, over the past hardly any years we’ve seen more and more attempts to get encircling Section 230 with creative lawyering. In the latest condition against Ripoff Report, the workaround was to charge the corporation with RICO (racketeering) violations for trying to “extort” companies. Specifically, a corporation named the Asia Economic Institute (AEI) was upset about a series of negative complaints about its employment environment, and questioned for them to be removed. Ripoff Report notes that it <i>never</i> removes content, however did pass on data about its Corporate Advocacy Program (CAP), where, for a fee, it tries to effectively moderate between the corporation and the complaining individual. AEI suggested that this was presented in an extortionary manner — as in “if you desire to fix your reputation, you demand to pay.”
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As Eric Goldman notes, this particular attack appears <a href=”http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2010/07/ripoff_report_b_1.htm” target=”_blank”>to have failed miserably</a>, in large part due to the circumstance that Ripoff Report secretly recorded all of its telephone calls. AEI fought against revealing the content of the telephone calls, noting that it did not know its staff were being recorded — and, in the end, the judge really does deem the evidence inadmissible. However just the circumstance that Ripoff Reports presented the recordings made the two principles from AEI suddenly have their memories jogged, and admit that they might have been “confused” about what was really said in the calls. From there, the judge found small evidence that the CAP program really represented any kind of extortion.
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AEI claimed that Ripoff Report’s promise to defend itself against any lawsuit represented a legal threat. However, the judge points outside that such an interpretation makes small sense. Claiming you will strongly defend yourself against any lawsuit is hardly a threat. On top of that, the judge notes that a “a threat to capture legal action cannot constitute extortion unless the threat was made with knowledge that the threatened claim was fake and without merit.” Furthermore, the judge notes that the threat to defend itself from any legal action was entirely separate from the CAP program. Thus, the supposed (however non-existent) “threat” was entirely independent from any request for money.
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As for the CAP program, the judge doesn’t see that as a threat either, specifically noting that Ripoff Reports makes it clear that no reports on the site will be removed, so there’s no demand for payment to remove a negative report.
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Unfortunately, the condition isn’t entirely over. The judge did leave open the slim possibility of a RICO charges based on wire fraud, and AEI is heading down that path immediately. Still, as Eric Goldman notes in his writeup, AEI may have difficulty showing any “harm” to its business due to the following:
<blockquote><i>
AEI was a content publisher from 2000-2009 (it’s immediately outside of business), and during those 9 years, it had zero revenues. This could constitute it dense for AEI to garner much judicial sympathy over any harm to its business.
</i></blockquote><br /><br /><a href=”http://techdirt.com/articles/20100802/02515910448.shtml”>Permalink</a> | <a href=”http://techdirt.com/articles/20100802/02515910448.shtml#comments”>Comments</a> | <a href=”http://techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20100802/02515910448&op=sharethis”>Email This Tale</a><br />
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