A little SF personal injury case threatens 'most important law' on the Internet

What is a "for-profit" business in this domain? In the classic fee-for-service model, a patient asks for a service from a physician and pays for it. The physician needs the money to keep the practice running and to buy food and shelter. You could call it a "for-profit" business like a plumber and other craftsmen, that's fair enough, but for doctors money isn't the primary motive, they are only earning a living.

One difference though, physicians practice under far stricter codes of ethics, and duty-bound to hold the relationship confidential. Furthermore, the physicians are sworn to place the interests of patients above financial gain when crucial to patients' life and limb. Most physicians strive to adhere to ethical standards.

Of course not every physician lives up to the commitments made, some are greedy, and do look at practicing medicine as a means to accumulate wealth. Fraudulent billing is one path, exaggerated claims, huge marketing efforts and so on are also ways to get there. But these actions aren't common.

And there is incompetence, which differs from the normal ambiguities of diagnosis or dead-ends of treatments that don't work. No disagreement, there can be reasons to complain, but not all complaints reflect physician error or misconduct, or actual adversity to the patient.

However, health care is a team effort. There are poor patients as well as poor doctors. Asymmetrically, patients can openly write anything about a doctor justified or not. But unlike services like AirBnB or EBay, doctors can't respond in an open forum to set the record straight.

Remember, patients can also grossly misbehave. What constraints are in place to prevent it, or from shifting blame for poor outcomes to the practitioner who was consulted?

Having been involved in "quality assurance" of patient care including financial misbehavior, I can positively assert complaints are taken seriously. If patients submit complaints to medical societies, hospitals, licensing boards, there's a very high probability the complaint will be investigated. Believe me, such investigations are despised by physicians much more that Yelp reviews.

BTW in the state in which I practice, proceeds of the medical board are public documents. You can find out about actions taken against physicians and physician assistants quite easily. Much more interesting and informative than Yelp reviews.

Someone posts my original work to Youtube. I sue the individual, and the court agrees that posting was illegal and orders the plaintiff to remove it. The plaintiff says that they no longer have the password. The court sends an order to Youtube saying that the should take it down. Now, there's a special procedure for this under the DMCA if the claim is copyright infringement, but are you saying that Youtube should be able to ignore the court order?

An identity thief applies for credit cards in my name. They are convicted, and the court orders the bank to cancel the credit card account that was fraudulently obtained. The bank is not a named party. Would you say that the bank should keep account until I sue them separately?

A children's toy is badly constructed and dangerous. The manufacturer is sued by an aggrieved parent. A court makes an award to the parent, and orders that sales of the toy be halted. All resellers receive a court order telling them to stop selling the product. Should they comply?

I'm not seeing the hazard in having companies obey court orders even if they are not named parties. Presumably there is a process where they can refuse and get a court hearing about the validity of the order? Or is the issue that there is no such process?

Edit:

I'm reading Volokh's amicus now (https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3038335/Hassell-v...), which makes it clearer that the distinction is something like "because speech is different". I don't really understand his argument, though, or why he keeps using "allegedly libelous" to describe something a court has found to be libelous.

I think it's because he's arguing that the collection of comments (or reviews) published by Yelp is contextually different than the individual comment, and that one may be libelous and the other not. While there is some truth to this, I think there is a difference between a conscious compilation, and a "bulletin board" type system where posters can add whatever they wish without review.

I don't have a strong opinion here. I presumed I was missing some of the backstory, and was asking Josh because I respect his opinion on technical matters and wondered what made him seem so certain that this was an important principle to preserve.

As I look deeper, I think the key the "must uphold" side is the belief that choosing to quote another is an independent speech act, and needs independent consideration. Unlike copyright or dangerous products, libel is considered a purely civil affair, and thus does not have the same remedies that those do. My doubt is whether an "aggregator" site without independent editorial voice should be entitled to this protection.