Reputation oils the gears of many markets. People’s expressions of opinion about goods and services help establish the reputations of sellers and service providers. Knowing that they are the subject of reputation systems that they do not control, service providers do a better job on average than they otherwise would. Slacking off even once can sully a reputation and produce well-placed economic sanctions: people won’t do business. Withdrawing reputation information from the public sphere will generally slow the process of winnowing bad actors out of any market and rewarding most highly the good ones. Commercial opinion is a little engine of positive externalities.
Federal privacy regulations under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act shaped the information terms in health care services in ways people are right to disagree with. So it might be tempting to trade away one’s right to criticize a doctor for greater privacy protection. But a new site called DoctoredReviews.com argues against that bargain—indeed, it argues the bargain is illusory—and it criticizes the use of copyright law to enforce the deal.
Apparently, a group called Medical Justice is offering doctors a form contract to give to patients that holds out greater privacy protection for the patient if the patient will refrain from criticizing the doctor. That’s a deal people should be free to make, though—again—it’s probably a bad one. One way that the deal is enforced is by giving the doctor a copyright in the expressions of opinion that patients may issue. This gives the doctor a right to issue “take-down” notices to web sites where content critical of them is found.
This peculiar use of copyright takes the virtuous cycle where a patient talking about an experience with a doctor benefits others, and doesn’t just nip it—bringing it back to zero. It places enforcement costs on third parties. The enforcement of copyrights in commentary pushes negative externalities onto web site operators as it deprives markets of useful information.
The DoctoredOpinions site has a good, concise explanation of the law as it relates to website owners. I think copyright has some explaining to do—its distinction from rights in physical property is in high relief—if its enforcement can draw disinterested and uninvolved third parties into an administrative/litigation vortex.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.