The law needs to keep up with online review sites. People can post negative reviews without personal consequences. Negative reviews that are true are not the problem. It’s fake negative reviews by disgruntled employees, competitors and outright liars that do real and unfair damage to businesses. False negative reviews have a real impact on the business and its employees.
Fighting negative reviews with fake positive reviews is not the answer either. In fact it’s criminal. Lifestyle Lift franchisee was order to pay a $300,000 fine
(NY Times Article at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/technology/internet/15lift.html?_r=1&hpw). People who post fake negative reviews need to be held accountable also.
Right now businesses can only defend their reputations by working with reputation repair companies. Businesses need to be able to counter unfounded attacks on their reputations. Currently there are laws against slander and libel. They need to extend to online speech on review sites too.
