“Consumer Reviews of Doctors and Copyright Law” Talk Notes

By Eric Goldman

You may recall that Medical Justice is a vendor trying to help doctors squelch online patient reviews–most recently by getting a prospective copyright assignment of the unwritten reviews and then sending 512(c)(3) takedown notices for any unwanted online reviews that are now newly owned. This is a terrible hack on the entire consumer review ecosystem, and it’s been bothering me for some time as I mentioned in my recent Regulation of Reputational Information paper.

Last month, I gave my first public talk about Medical Justice at the University of Houston. I styled the talk “Consumer Reviews of Doctors and Copyright Law,” two topics I never thought would go together but apparently they do. My talk slides. I will have more to say about Medical Justice’s system and its many deficiencies in the near future.