Residential Property Review Website – Seeking feedback

I wonder how restaurant and holiday accomodation review sites deal with defamation risk. I could submit all sorts of unjustified criticism of my last holiday destination or meal. Would the website publisher be held liable? How do they avoid being held liable?

Question wrote:

I doubt you could sue a review site, otherwise all the big companies would be sueing every big review site …

Where do you get that idea? You’ve clearly forgotten the case from several years ago when the owner of a Sydney restaurant successfully sued the author of a review in the SMH that said his lobster was “inedible” or something like that, which the court regarded as a statement of fact rather than opinion.

Or, more recently, how about this story from the USA? Or this one, closer to home.

The reason big companies don’t sue big websites for negative reviews may be that there could be no net gain, they will probably look like bullies and it just extends the life and reach of the original complaint.

But we’re not talking about big websites and big companies.  We are discussing fledgling websites that could see their entire working capital tied up in a law suit brought by an entity they have rightly or wrongly criticised.

There is no right to free speech in Australia, at least not enshrined in our constitution.  And that means a negative review is subject to potential challenge in the courts with each case decided on its merits.

It would not be up to the defamed company to prove the claims were false – it would be up to the review website to prove they were true and were not motivated by malice as well as being in the public interest.

That’s a pretty high bar to reach … and probably explains why there isn’t any such website operating on a significant scale in Australia right now.

There is a difference between the person/company providing the website to provide a review (merely a platform of expression) and the person providing the review.

The website provider won’t be subject to defamation proceedings only the reviewer.

Andy wrote:

The website provider won’t be subject to defamation proceedings only the reviewer.

And you know this, how? Have you heard about how Buzzfeed had to pay out on defamation against Emma Husar?

Here are some facts:

There is no right to free speech enshrined in any law or in the constitution of Australia.

There is no clear legislation about how defamation works in the case of internet forums where people express their opinions.

However, we know that the defences that exist in the law include public interest and absence of malice.  We also know that you can’t legally defame a business … unless your comments affect their business in a negative way.

So if someone has, say, a long-running dispute with their building manager, and then goes on the review website and accuses the building manager’s company of something that might affect their ability to get new business, do you think that business is going to sit quietly and not respond?

How likely is this? Have a look at websites like Tripadvisor where reviews are closely monitored to make sure that reviewers are not accusing hotels and restaurants of dishonesty, fraudulent behaviour or anything else that could be judged defamatory.

If a review and rating website can achieve  a critical mass of traffic where attacks on it were seen as attacks on the strata community, and had enough financial backing to monitor, filter and and if necessary censor potentially defamatory material, it might get away with it.  Otherwise they are walking on thin ice.

I say again, there is no legal right to free speech in Australia.  There are conventions and norms that allow us to speak our minds but they are no guarantees.

And be sure of this, if a person or company feels they have been defamed, they aren’t going to after the disgruntled teenager sitting in his share house anonymously firing off abusive posts and emails.  They will go after the people they can find and who might have some money in the bank – the website and the people who run it.

It’s a great idea and everything will be fine … until it isn’t.  And bear in mind, if someone with deep pockets comes after you in a legal action, they can destroy you, even when you are right and they are wrong.

Point taken about Buzzfeed, which probably wasn’t a great example, but have a look at this article from last year that explains exactly how and why a website could be sued for a derogatory review.

According to its author, you can only be sued for defamation if you identify the people allegedly defamed … but how hard would it be not to identify the committee, the chair or the strata manager – if only by inference –  if you identified the apartment block.

And if you don’t identify the block, what’s the point?

I think there is a model out there (in the UK, perhaps) where websites have 30 days after a complaint to delete potentially defamatory content, but then have to wear the consequences if they decline to do so.  Seems eminently fair to me.

Not sure what this page is all about, but to reply to your question on feedback re Strata .. Yes..it is a great idea