Carpet cleaner sues Yelp over anonymous reviews.

Heard this story on the radio on the way home tonight. Googled it.
http://upstart.bizjournals.com/entrepreneurs/hot-shots/2014/01/10/carpet-entrepreneur-beats-yelp-in-court.html?page=all

Yep, that one has made it all the way to the Supreme Court. That's a huge win if it stands as judged so far. That will change the landscape of reviews to protect the business from false accusations.

it's about time, anonymous reviews can really hurt.

Big victory, but I wonder about the intellect of the Judge. First Amendment provides protection of the citizen from the government and has nothing to do with protection from a private business.

I was snared in an internet mess at work a few years ago where some employees rated their job on a website called "Job Vent" according to several categories. The company came down and decided to fire all members that gave it a negative rating...we all claimed first ammendment rights, but the Judge quickly explained that it doesn't apply to civilian matters and that we could be fired.

We only kept our jobs due to a legal technicality they didn't think they could beat in court and the fear of bad press. Someone leaving a negative review is not protected in any way by the ammendment.

I feel there should be a middle ground for this issue, the identity of the reviewer shouldn't have to be revealed BUT since they wrote them, yelp should have a policy in place for them to be required to respond if the business owner responds to their complaint, there should be a balance and fairness and yelp is the middle man here, they should act fairly because they get $$ from businesses.