The Courthouse News Service article [1] is a little more detailed. What stood out to me was the following bit:<p>> The business sued [..] and subpoenaed Yelp to learn the identities of the anonymous reviewers. Yelp repeatedly refused to respond to it, however, leading the trial court to hold Yelp in contempt.<p>My first thought was, "Gee, that's either lazy or clueless of Yelp!" IANAL; was there a better strategy for Yelp, presuming they wanted to fight user info disclosure at all costs?<p>[1] <a href="http://www.courthousenews.com/2014/01/09/64385.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.courthousenews.com/2014/01/09/64385.htm</a>
Some people take their Yelp reviews too seriously. I've been to several places that I went to because of their positive score on Yelp only to hear them upset because of the one negative Yelp review they got. I have to say: getting upset because of one or even a handful of negative reviewers is petty. Just about <i>every</i> business that has a significant amount of reviews is going to have one or two. On the other hand, if a business has a ton of negative reviews, that's something to be concerned about.<p>I seriously doubt the solution in either case is to sue the people leaving the negative reviews.
Is a common believe by some people that the business model of Yelp for big restaurants is plain old extortion: "Please Pay us a fee to have premium priority! Otherwise some strange negative reviews may appear that you cannot refute nor delete."
Yelp only hurts (or helps) small new businesses. (McDonald's doesn't need, care, or probably know Yelp).<p>Small business owners invest lots of there personal money, time, sweat, and tears and don't need some stupid brat posting some garbage on Yelp because they were not happy with the $25 they spent.
> Currently, Yelp reviews of the business are less stellar than, for example, reviews on Hadeed Carpet Cleaning's own site.<p>I'm shocked that a company's website has better reviews than an independent third-party review site. Someone call the lawyers.
"CNet is now available in spanish!! Close [x]"<p>Click close.<p>Click close again.<p>Clickity, clickity, click. No dice.<p>Open JavaScript console. "ReferenceError: om is not defined"<p>Thank you CNet!
You may not be able to make everyone happy always. Instead of suing your customers for negative comments, it may be better to try and improve your product/service.
And, once they have the identity of the yelp reviewers, they can go over to the rip off report website and post, anonymously, the most hideous and vile things about the reviewer and expose their private and personal information without any recourse whatsoever.<p>Smart tactic. Get their identity and then go harass them. That'll teach them to leave reviews about services and products they have paid for!