Dentist Who Used Copyright To Silence Her Patients Drops Out of Sight 260
According to a report at Ars Technica, a dentist named Stacy Makhnevich, who billed herself as "the Classical Singer Dentist of New York," threatened patients who wrote bad Yelp reviews with lawsuits, along the same lines as the online dental damage-control outlined in a different Ars story in 2011. This time, though, there's something even stranger than bargaining with patients to forgo criticism: when a patient defied that demand by describing his experience in negative terms on Yelp, Makhnevich followed up on the threat by seeking a takedown order based on copyright (putatively signed over to her for any criticism that patients might write, post-visit) — then disappeared entirely when lawyers for patient Robert Lee filed a class-action lawsuit challenging the validity of the agreement.
Form Paperwork Used by Many (Score:5, Interesting)
Who knows what's up with this dentist. But the company who provides the form paperwork is really the people that the lawyers should be going after. D. Makhnevich is only one of many many who use this company's services / products.
Also this points out why I never pay much attention to Yelp: This dentist is rightfully getting a lot of heat over this business, but most of the "opinions" about her on Yelp are by people who have almost certainly never used her services. This is how it goes when businesses get bad publicity, everyone runs to trash them on Yelp regardless of if they have ever done business with whoever is the target.
There are a number of other sites that specialize in doctor ratings from patient that have a significantly different score for this clown.
Probably Not Enforceable Anyway (Score:5, Interesting)
What is the "consideration" given to the patient, in exchange for giving up copyright? Clearly it isn't dentistry, since that could be had elsewhere without the requirement of waiving copyright.
So what did Makhnevich give patients in exchange for that? If nothing, then there is no contract.
I suppose it's remotely possible that the patients were trading their copyright for dentistry, but that seems a pretty thin argument.
Re:Who gives a fuck? (Score:1, Interesting)
Wow, pre-teen and he already thinks he can judge a human based on intelligence.
At least judging on looks doesn't have the pretence of depth.
Neither good brain nor good body are likely to provide you with a good relationship. As the old saying goes, it is easier to teach skills than values.
Re:What's most surprising about this story. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Probably Not Enforceable Anyway (Score:5, Interesting)
My ex-wife does catering for local hotels, i.e. she rents their restaurants and runs them for them. So I know a little bit about the local hotels. Last year a friend wanted to stay in my city but he wanted a top end hotel and my ex works with the mid range hotels so apart from asking her advice I looked at the internet sites. Most had very similar comments. Several comments were very obviously professionally written and I could even see the same style of writing in several comments. Anyway, one hotel interested me. It had several comments including a story about room service stealing a guests mobile phone and about how the guest was very badly treated by reception when they complained. There were lots of replies and debate about how terrible this was. The story interested me because I knew that the hotel had not opened yet and had not employed any staff.
The hotels hire advertising companies who will write glowing stories about the hotel (lies) and write bad stories about the opposition. I am talking about hotels but I am sure that the concept applied to all areas of debate on the internet.
Re: still no match for Orly Taitz (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What's most surprising about this story. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What's most surprising about this story. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've never heard so many lies from anyone other than collections. I managed to stump them by asking them to send me an itemized bill. "I'll pay it if you can bill me for it" But all they had was that they bought some IOU off someone else who had bought it from someone else... So they had no idea of what I owned for what. $20 for pencil, $350 in fees, interest, and penalties. Nope, it was $400 - best guess as to a debt amount. Begging them to send me a written bill for what I owe so I can pay it got them confused and shut them up.
Copyright not her only worry (Score:3, Interesting)
I imagine this class action lawsuit is not the reason she is on the run. I would think that if what Lee said was true, and she was charging insurance companies $4000 for a $200 job, she has bigger problems.
All speculation, but it seems to me this is a "take the money and run before I get discovered for widespread multimillion dollar insurance fraud" disappearing act rather than a "OMG a civil law suit! Run!" disappearing act.
Re:What's most surprising about this story. (Score:4, Interesting)
So, I crossed out those parts and corrected the language until it was something I was satisfied with. I called it to the attention of the receptionist and said "I don't agree to these terms as is. I have modified it in the following way, as noted on the form." Signed and handed it back.
I do the same, all the time. I was once asked to take a lie detector test (for, of all things, a job at Radio Shack). When I read the forms, they reserved the right to re-sell the results of the test to anyone, in perpetuity. They also denied me any right to challenge those results. I crossed out the offensive sections and handed it in. To their credit, they (the testing company) DID read my revisions, and said it wasn't worth their while to continue under those conditions. They didn't test me, and I got the job anyway.