Ripoff Report: To sue, or not to sue!
This question can be summed up in one word: NO! Unless, this is the absolute final option you have in removing a negative review (the first being to file a rebuttal and the second being to hire I, Lance Bachmann and 1SEO.com to bury the report in the search engines).
Most lawsuits filed against Ripoff Report do not find success due to the Communications Decency Act which protects the online review site stating: “”No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider”.
Because of this protection, Ripoff Report fights all lawsuits brought up against them. If you sue Ripoff Report for something a third party said about you or your company, you can expect to spend a lot of time and money on a useless cause.
But on the bright side, your attorney will love you because you will be making him or her, a very rich man or women! Suing Ripoff Report is the least-effective option there is to having a negative review removed.
No lawsuit against Ripoff Report? What do you do?
Even though you can’t sue Ripoff Report, you can find out who published the false information and sue them! If you win in court, you could have Google delist the report from its index. Here’s how you can make this happen:
- Find the original author and file a lawsuit against him or her. You now have the opportunity, or burden (depending how you look at it) to prove the report to be false in court
- Are you sure the information said about you or your company ISN’T true? Okay good! If you don’t have a valid claim for defamation, you mine as well pack in your bags.
- Obtain a court order declaring the report to be false and defamatory.
You can then present this court order to Google who will honor it and remove the report from its search index. It would be as if the false information was never on Google. However, it could still show up on other search engines like Bing or Yahoo. But having it removed from Google is a huge step in the right direction since they rule the web.
Do you think suing to have a Ripoff Report taken down is a smart move?
