Careful Who You Cross -- He Might Vent Online

Terence G. Banich had been outed as a bad tipper, and he didn’t even know it.

He popped up on the cheapskate list at BitterWaitress.com, berated by a server at a Chicago restaurant for leaving a $3 tip on a $200 check.

Informed of his tipping infamy, Banich said that if he left such a measly gratuity, it was a mistake, a misplaced decimal point, and he was sorry for it.

But Banich, a Chicago lawyer, also said he was none too pleased that a waitress had lifted information from his credit card -- his name -- and posted it on the Internet.

Banich has been cybersmeared, and he’s not alone.

As the Internet has grown, so have websites that allow people to post all sorts of reviews and opinions about customers, bosses, businesses and so on.

You can gripe about your boss at JobSchmob.com, complain about Wal-Mart at the Consumerist.com or rail against a contractor’s shoddy work on Angie’s List.

For the most part, these sites are a good thing -- more information leads to better choices -- whether picking a place to work, to shop or to eat.

But a byproduct is the cybersmear, a critique run amok. It’s a nasty opinion posted on the Internet that can sully the reputation of a business or individual, sometimes through outright lies.

And those who feel they’ve been defamed usually have little recourse. By law, such websites are not treated as publishers. Instead, they are pipelines for the opinions of their readers and contributors.

Sites such as BitterWaitress have been on the Internet since the beginning, but now they reach more people than ever. That’s partly because the Web is becoming such a staple in people’s lives: 72% of U.S. adults use it, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

It’s also because blogs and message boards have become so easy to create in the past few years.

“It’s kind of a no-brainer to get these things set up,” said Laura J. Gurak, director of the University of Minnesota’s Internet Studies Center.

Derek Gordon, marketing director at blog-tracking site Technorati, said it followed about 30 million blogs worldwide. The number of blogs tracked by Technorati has doubled every 5 1/2 months, Gordon said.

“Before blogs, very few people had means to express their ideas,” he said. “Now, people have a distribution method.”

Chris Fehlinger began distributing restaurant servers’ opinions in 1999 when he started BitterWaitress. Now, type the word “waitress” into Google’s search engine, and Fehlinger’s site is the first you’ll see.

Fehlinger, a veteran New York City waiter, started the site as a newsletter. He added celebrity gossip, tidbits from servers about stars’ tipping habits, and a section where waiters and waitresses could post their own stories about managers and customers.

Those stories, which are anonymous, range from reasoned complaints to wild rants. Individual restaurants aren’t frequently named, though some can be identified by details given.

Then there’s BitterWaitress’ bad tipper database, which frequently drops names of the famous and the not-at-all famous.

“It started out as a sort of joke,” Fehlinger said of the list, which sports a formal title that can’t be printed in this newspaper.

But it has proved quite popular. There are 2,500 postings on it from throughout the country, and Fehlinger said he had 2,000 more bad-tip posts that he hadn’t had time to put up.

Banich’s name surfaced on the bad tipper list after he and a companion dined last fall at a Chicago steakhouse, Ruth’s Chris.

The poster was anonymous but said the server called Banich “cheap” and groused that the woman with him complained about the menu’s lack of vegetarian options.

In an interview, Banich recalled the meal, though he couldn’t recall the amount of the tip.

But he said that he was generally a good tipper, and that if he wanted to make a point about bad service, he still wouldn’t have left so little.

“Do you think if I had a bill of $200 that I’d [purposely] leave $3? Definitely not,” Banich said.

Even his server acknowledged in the post that Banich might have just goofed.

The server might have gotten Banich’s name from his credit card. The server also apparently threw Banich’s name into an Internet search engine: The posting noted that he was a lawyer, information Banich said he didn’t give out.

Banich was troubled that his credit card was used for more than just paying his bill.

“The expectation is that [payment] is the only reason they’ll use that information, and that they are not going to expropriate it to air a grievance in public,” he said. “It’s a breach of trust.”

Chris Bachman, general manager of the Ruth’s Chris, said that he’d never heard of BitterWaitress and that the restaurant “obviously” didn’t endorse postings such as the one about Banich.

Fehlinger said he accepted postings only from servers who got names from credit cards. A credit card transaction is ultimately verifiable, unlike a cash transaction. He doesn’t require a copy of a card slip but takes on faith that a name comes from a credit card.

Servers have sent him more than just names from cards. “People have sent in numbers and I say, ‘No way,’ ” Fehlinger said.

By posting names provided by anonymous sources, Internet sites can take what is mostly a positive thing -- venting and even ranting -- and turn it into something malicious, say some Internet observers.

“I think the blogosphere was born on ranting,” said Technorati’s Gordon. Still, he said, “the vast majority of the time, people will not name names. The vast majority of people are civil.”

Fehlinger said that if people named on BitterWaitress complained -- courteously -- that they had been wronged, he would remove the offending post.

Some websites have procedures in place to stop potentially abusive or defamatory posts.

Craigslist, one of the Web’s most-visited sites, lets users flag for removal any posts they believe are inappropriate or illegal.

Angie’s List subscribers reveal their names to the website’s operators (posted reviews remain anonymous). And they can write only one review of an individual contractor every six months.

Even if lies slip through the cracks of a review or rant site, the site’s operator has a strong legal shield: the Communications Decency Act. It says that providers of an “interactive computer service” shall not be treated as publishers of information; therefore, they aren’t held liable for objectionable material posted by their users.

Thus, if a blogger personally publishes something defamatory on his website, he can be held liable. But if that information is posted on a message board or online forum, he can’t.

Fehlinger says he often receives legal threats from people or businesses named on BitterWaitress.

“They say, ‘I’ll sue you for defamation of character.’ I say, ‘Try a different medium, sorry.’ ”

The Decency Act is a defense being used by Rip-off Report, a consumer advocacy site sued for libel by an Illinois management consulting firm, George S. May International Co.

Rip-off Report allows consumers to post reports about shoddy products or services and the companies that produce them.

It’s a well-traveled site, attracting 550,000 unique visitors in February, according to ComScore Networks, which tracks websites. The fact that it surfaces in ComScore’s database is testimony to the size of its audience.

The Rip-off Report doesn’t write the complaints it posts, said Ed Magedson, the site’s Phoenix-based manager and owner. “The only thing we do is remove. We do not add. We remove foul language.”

In September 2004, May International sued Rip-off Report and Magedson in U.S. District Court in Chicago claiming the site posted several false accusations, including that the company and its executives engaged in fraud, larceny, and possession of controlled substances and child pornography.

Bart Lazar, an attorney representing May, said the company thought the postings originated from a competing consulting firm.

U.S. District Judge Charles R. Norgle Sr. issued a temporary restraining order to force Rip-off Report to take down some of the May posts, saying they included “false or deceptively misleading” statements.

Not satisfied with Rip-off Report’s response, May asked Norgle to find the site in contempt of court for violating the restraining order. Norgle agreed.

May International also is asking for monetary damages, claiming that it lost business because of the postings.

Rip-off Report has several defenses to May’s claims, but the primary one is the Decency Act.

“Legal threats, we get them every day, often twice a day,” Magedson said.

He said anyone living in the Internet era better get used to the notion that they might end up on the Web, whether they liked it or not.

“If you do business, someone will eventually blog you,” he said. “Your neighbor down the street may blog you. Good or bad, right or wrong, we’re all going to be blogged.”

He ought to know. There’s a website called Bad-business-rip-off.net dedicated to discrediting Magedson and Rip-off Report.