Interesting Legal Question...

[Lee]

I was wondering, given that thread about the lawyers suing that legal service review site, what are the actual legalities of running adult review sites?

I mean, could it be possible that if the review site owner gives a 'bad' review full of opinion about a specific site/members area they are opening themselves to legal action from the company who owns the paysite that was reviewed?

I would image, it wouldnt be that far of a stretch for the person/company bringing the legal action to prove that the review site owner was damaging their business, in the very market place where they conduct their services.

Chad, any thoughts on this? Do you think there is liability for review site owners when it comes to 'bad' reviews that get published on their sites?

Regards,

Lee

[hotporn]

It would be like movie studio suing an L.A. Times movie critic, because he found their movie totally boring and sickening.... I find that extremly hard to happen....

[Lee]

It would be like movie studio suing an L.A. Times movie critic, because he found their movie totally boring and sickening.... I find that extremly hard to happen....

Yet it is happening right now...

http://forums.gaywidewebmasters.com/...ad.php?t=24370

Also, movie critics in the press are covered legally because they are press.

Regards,

Lee

[hotporn]

Yep I've read the thread, but evaluating a service is one thing, while evaluating a product (like movie, website) is totally different.

I still haven't heard of a movie studio going after a movie critic who just posted his view of the product

[Lee]

I still haven't heard of a movie studio going after a movie critic who just posted his view of the product

Because movie critics have journalistic protections, so you probably never will unless they start basing their reviews of movies on complete BS, like many review sites currently do.

Regards,

Lee

[raymor]

Everyone has the same freedom of the press whether you write for a national
a magazine or a tiny web site. There are two main issues. One is fact versus
opinion. You can pretty well give all of the negative opinions you want, at least
in free countries. You can say you don't like this site, or this lawyer, or whatever,
and tell why you don't like them as long as you don't lie about a fact about them.
So I can say right here that I don't like Lee because his ears are weird looking,
but I can't say that I don't like him because he stole my donkey. ( I've never seen
his ears, actually, they are probbaly very nice ears. ) To falsely say that he stole
my donkey would libel in written here, slander if said by mouth.

In the suit against the lawyer rating site, the plaintiffs would argue that the site suggested
that the ratings reflected the facts in the records. It wasn't a review by someone who
had used the lawyer or an opinion. Instead the site claimed that the ratings summarized
facts found in state bar records. The change they made was to the ratings for attorneys
where there asn't sufficient information in the records to come up with a rating. Their
old system would rate them as "only average" if the information was not available.
They've now changed it to indicate that the information isn't available. By so doing
that have corrected the false fact they claimed that the lawyer was only average when
it fact they may be great, the info just wasn't available.

The plaintiffs would probably also make a weaker claim that the state bar records gave
no basis in fact for a usable rating system, so by claiming that the ratings accurately
reflected the facts the defendant had again made a false statement of fact, or libel.

Keep in mind that the guy who using suing is a class acton lawyer who sues people
for a living, suing also on behalf of other lawyers who make their living suing people.
There may be no basis whatever for their suit and they may well lose. I can sue Lee
for making this board blue if I want to. I'd lose for sure, but I could still sue, so just
because someone sues doesn't mean anything, really.

Possibly a more likely concern for adult review sites involves copyright and fair use.
If you're going to review a site, it makes sense to have a picture or two from the site
and possibly a screenshot of the site. You see this all the time on TV shows that
review a movie. They show clips of the movie to demonstate what they are
talking about. At first glance this may seem to be copyright infringement, but it's not
if the review is legitimate, not just an excuse to steal some pics, and if the number of
pics used are reasonable for the purpose of providing an informative and entertaining
review. This is a "fair use" of copyrighted material.

I faced this issue back in 1996, I think it was, on my first site when I reviewed videos.
I had video reviews, with short clips, and a link where you could buy the video on VHS.
The producer of my favorite video, Bob Bright, called me one day asking me to take the
clips of his video down. It seems that the video store affiliate program that my "buy"
links went to didn't actually carry his videos anymore, so he wasn't going to get any
sales from it. My reviews were very short, short enough to be questionable as to whether
they were really reviews or just excuses to steal video, so I took the videos down
despite that fact that I probably would have won in court if I felt like a court fight.
That was an early lesson to me that it's better not to push the limits in this business.
I just went and bought some good video content after that from the biggest producer
on the web at the time, my neighbor Dave Clark.

A great example of pushing fair use like that are the celebrity magazines like Celebrity
Skin. They are basically porn mags full of screencaps of celebrities in nude scenes,
which would normally be copyright infringment and have right of publicity issues, but they
include a full page of text talking about the actress and about the movie, so they sucessfully
claim fair use.

So in summary as long as you don't falsely represent the facts or go to far with
copyright issues you should be fine legally.

[chadknowslaw]

I don't think there would be any legal basis for such a lawsuit. In fact, I don't think the lawsuit by lawyers against the legal review site has any basis -- it is just a bunch of egotistical lawyers who had their feelings hurt and too much time on their hands.
I cannot imagine such a lawsuit even getting filed if the plaintiff has to pay attorney's fees, and I cannot imagine such a lawsuit surviving summary judgment --it would be dismissed after discovery was done.

[raymor]

Right after posting my reply I noticed the other thread about obscenity charges and I thought
I'd also mention an extension of the idea discussed previously about how Celebrity Skin
uses text to provide legal cover for what would otherwise be copyright infringement.

The folks in the other thread now have a Utah grand jury deciding if their stuff is obscene.
I feel for them, because in Utah a lot of people consider anything with an R rating to
be obscene.

Anyway, besides Celebrity Skin you'll notice the big pioneering magazines like Playboy
and Penthouse also have a ton of text. They probably have 10 pages of articles, political
commentary, etc. for every oen page of pictures. There's a damn good reason for that,
and one any adult webmaster should consider if they would like some protection from
a Utah jury sending them to prison. The legal definition of obscenity in the US requires
that "the work taken as a whole", the whole web site, "lacks any serious literary,
artistic, political, or scientific value". So if you make one good political point somewhere
on your web site you've given yourself a significant protection from obscenity charges.
When I used to run sites I did that by including as part of each site a discussion of what
obscenity is versus pornography and how each relates to the first amendment. In this
discussion I was sure to quote the Supreme Court often. Because my site included the
rulings of the supreme court, any court convicting me would have to by implication
rule that the words of the Court "lack any serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific
value". It's awefully tough for any lawyer to argue or any judge to rule that the rulings
of the Supreme Court itself lack any serious value. Consider adding SOMETHING to
your site somewhere that has some literary, artistic, political, or scientific value, such
as political cartoons or fantasy art that really is art, despite the naked metal chick
in the scene.

[raymor]

Chad, would you agree with my assesment of opinion versus fact - the idea that
you can publish any opinion you want in a review, so long as you avoid false statements
of fact that could consitute libel?

[chadknowslaw]

I believe that an opinion 99.9% of the time cannot be construed as libel, so I would almost always agree with you.

I leave that little opening for those that want to come up with the most outrageous, impossible, it-won't-happen-but-some-people-have-to-prove-a-point
scenarios....

[raymor]

99.9% of the time
...
I leave that little opening for those that want to come up with the most outrageous, impossible, it-won't-happen-but-some-people-have-to-prove-a-point
scenarios....

LOL. I should start using 99.9% when I post just for those it-won't-happen-but-some-people-have-to-prove-a-point people.

[Dzinerbear]

And I imagine if a site did sue a review site it would be total death for the program because every review site on the Web would pull down their reviews. Good bye traffic.

Michael

[chadknowslaw]

And I imagine if a site did sue a review site it would be total death for the program because every review site on the Web would pull down their reviews. Good bye traffic.

Michael

Karma evens things out in the long run:whip:

[CamCruise]

Dont you think that it would only hurt the reviewer if he said bad things about a site that everybody else likes?
Why would surfers trust said reviewer on other reviews?

And in the end there is no such thing as bad press, as long as the web address is spelled right.