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By Pierre Zarokian
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act was meant to help individuals establish copyrights for their materials online. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work to get defamatory content removed, unless the content was something you owned, such as a section of your website copied or a copied picture that you own the copyright to.  However, be adviced that some sites such as ripoffreport and thedirty.com may not comply with a DMCA take down notice, where the owners use federal protections to justify their behavior.  Sending a notice to Google may not even work, as Google most often asks to deal with the sites directly. We have sent plenty of DMCA notices on behalf of our clients and know what works and what doesn’t.  Unfortunately, most often DMCA would not work to take down defamatory content.

When the DMCA takedown notice fails, there are a few more options left to you.

Establish Your Reputation

You can leverage the power of social media and SEO to help rebuild your reputation after a crisis, and you don’t even need a large budget. It helps to have tools that manage social media for you, identifying what people are saying and who your likely product evangelists are. This lets you build multiple profiles, update content and monitor how everything is performing for you.

Within no time, the negative content will be buried in favor of positive content with a higher user engagement. You also get the bonus of increasing market reach and identifying key influencers you can use to spread your messaging.

This is a service our firm is best at, so if you need a professional to help you, contact us.

Take Legal Action

You cannot sue the site hosting the defamatory content the Communications Decency Act protects them. What you need to do is sue the poster or if it I anonymous you need to sue a “John Doe” and try to subpoena the records of the site hosting the content to find out who posted it. Some sites like Ripoff Report may remove content if you have a court ordered removal and if they don’t Google would most likely comply.

Legal action is costly, and not always guaranteed.  Although our firm does not provide legal removals, we can refer you to one of the best attorneys that does this service.

Nik Richie – thedirty.com

We reported last week that thedirty.com was a victim of hackers taking it down due to DOS attacks. It seems the site has gone live now and Nik Richie has improved his servers and technology. He posted a message on thedirty stating:

“TheDirty.com is back online. We are still under DDoS attack and other attacks, but I’ve put a stronger team in place and rebuilt the infrastructure from scratch. I’m not going anywhere. This year the DIRTY ARMY will rise — I implore you to join.

As you can see the new design is in place. I’m 35% complete and there are many bugs. The castle wall is strong and with your help I’m hoping to build Malbork. So please use this comment section to give us guidance on what you like, don’t like, what to build in your favor, any fixes/bugs to kill and suggestions.

We will win. DIRTY ARMY Strong!- nik”

A speed analysis at Google Insights shows that the site is still a bit slow and this could be because they are still under attack.

If you have been listed on thedirty.com and require removal of your post, please contact us for pricing and details. You can complete the contact form on the right side of this page.

Nik Richie – thedirty.com

A judge just awarded $1.25 million over defamatory comments on Thedirty.com brought by a woman who says comments on the site stated that her 3 children were from 3 different men because she wanted to collect child support and the owner Nik Richie refused to remove them when she requested.

The judgement was awarded against Dirty World Entertainment Recordings. However, TheDirty attorney states that thedirty.com is not owned by that entity and Nik Richie has nothing to do with it. The correct entity that owns Thedirty.com is called the Dirty World, LLC.

The attorney stated that the Sarah Jones judgment last year was also awarded towards the wrong company!

This is what Attorney David Gingras stated:

“In short, Ms. Stewart certainly has obtained a judgment against Dirty World Entertainment Recordings, but that company has nothing whatsoever to do with Dirty World, LLC or TheDirty.com. She is welcome to try to collect that judgment, bearing in mind that the plaintiff in the Sarah Jones case also has an $11 million default judgment against the same entity (see attached copy). However, to the extent that Ms. Stewart claims that she has a judgment against TheDirty.com or Dirty World, LLC, those claims are completely false.”

You can read more details here.

We just reported that thedirty.com was down due to hacker DOS attacks.  Apparantly they also hacked Nik Richie’s icloud account and a personal message from it was posted online showing Nik trying to make a deal with girl or prostitute to sleep with his friends so then he could remove a post…funny stuff.  We have no way of knowing the authenticity of this, so we leave the judgment up to you.

Read below the full messages.

Thedirty.com has been down for the past 2 weeks apparently hit by a group of hackers. The group “Anonymous” seems to be behind it and FBI is currently investigating. However, another group called Justice Squad took credit on youtube as well.

TMZ Reports that the owner Nik Richie has lost over $250K-$300K already in ad revenue due to the hack.

It seems this is a Denial of Service Attack (AKA DOS Attack), which means even if the servers are moved the attack will follow. These hackers are doing some serious attacking because Nik has not been able to put the site back up for the last 2 weeks!

Similar attacks often are launched against ripoffreport.com as well.

TMZ quoted Nik as saying: “These hackers are hypocrites. My website promotes free speech. F****** losers.”

Apparently Nik also had his iCloud account hacked and some personal messages were posted online showing attempts of post removal in return for sex. Read it here.

There is a video of Anonymous from June 2012 that threatens to take down Thedirty, which you can see below.

Here is a screen shot of the post by Justice Squad on Twitter.

Yelp, the online review database that has become an ubiquitous part of the Web, is being accused of shielding companies who pay premiums from bad reviews. Yelp’s sales team has been using poor reviews as a sales tool, implying that businesses can pay their way out of hot water caused by user reviews. Since 2008, some 2,000 complaints have been filed by businesses and consumers.

Yelp also has several problems with anonymous reviews, and currently faces a court order demanding they reveal the identity of users who posted on their website. Yelp has states in its FAQ that pay to play is out, but 2,000 complaints don’t come out of thin air. Something is wrong, and the CEO of our company, Pierre Zarokian, has the latest news on this recent development from his new article featured on Search Engine Journal.

Yelp is one of the most important destinations on the Web. Its database of user-generated reviews can offer potential shoppers a quality source to vet a business before they shop. But faked reviews are threatening to dilute that landscape, eating away at the purity that a service like Yelp needs in order to be successful. In response, the company has announced new and aggressive steps to remove these false reviews.

The CEO of Yelp, Jeremy Stoppleman, is creating something of a firestorm with the announcement. Companies caught “soliciting” reviews by paying their reviewers will now get a kind of badge that designates their business as one that paid for reviews. This messages comes as a popup that the user cannot avoid clicking on. With Yelp reputation already being such a hot commodity, businesses will need to exercise even more caution when asking for reviews.

Our CEO, Pierre Zarokian, wrote about this change in policy. You can read the entire article at Search Engine Watch.

Pierre Zarokian, CEO of Reputation Stars

Our CEO “Pierre Zarokian” will be speaking about Reputation Management on Feb 19, 2014 in Orange County, CA at an event organized by TechBiz Connection.

Jack Bicer the president of TechBiz Connection stated: “If you are a professional intrigued by today’s evolving world of social media, personal online identities, and online business branding, you need to learn what it means to have an online presence and what this says about you (or your business, brand).  After all, your online reputation IS your reputation.”

For more info, see the official press release here.

A ruling from a Virginia Court of Appeals has rendered anonymous reviews unprotected, at least in Virginia. The popular online review website Yelp is at the center of litigation regarding the legitimacy of anonymous reviews. On one side is Yelp, whose terms of service explicitly ban users from posting faked reviews that are negative or positive. On the other side are the businesses hurt by these reviews.

This landmark case will shape the landscape of online reviews for some time to come. The plaintiff’s case seems to mirror the plight of so many businesses with reputation and image problems. Yelp uses an automated system to deal with spoofed reviews, which it claims is capable of dealing with these fakes. Yet the fact remains that fake reviews have become an industry in and of themselves. While this court ruling does little to improve these conditions, it does set the precedent for future cases.

In a new article for Search Engine Journal, Our CEO Pierre Zarokian explores the ruling and asks the question: will online reviews ever be safe again? Or have the courts made a terrible mistake, relying on outdated case law to render a verdict with far-reaching consequences?

A class action lawsuit filed in California seeks to get Yelpers paid for reviews. The lawsuit claims that Yelp runs a cult like environment and instead of paying the reviewers, it offers them badges,  titles such as “Elite”, praise,  free liquor and food, and free promotional Yelp attire, such as red panties with ‘Make Me Yelp!’

We spoke to one of the plaintiffs, Lilly Jueng, who is an Elite reviewer. She claimed that Yelp was very restrictive of what she was able to post and cancelled her account when they were not happy with a review that she left.  “Reviewers should be able to post any review they want on any public company without restrictions,” said Jueng.

The plaintiffs also claim that yelp often hosted parties for Elite reviewers and the Yelpers were expected to leave positive reviews for the restaurant hosting the event.

We also spoke to Daniel Bernath, one of the lead attorneys on the case. He stated: “A worker is not permitted to waive their rights to wages under the federal Fair Standards Labor Act.” Mr. Bernath feels that they have real good chance of winning the case based on current labor laws. He stated that it does not matter that some people may think this lawsuit is ridiculous, because the laws are build in a way that supports their claims. “The trial court judge will read the complaint and will apply the law. It is a settled law and we are confident that our clients will get paid for their labors.”

Our CEO, Pierre Zarokian, has written a more detailed article for  Search Engine Watch .