Monday, October 19, 2015

The Party's Over



Alas, I am pulling out of the reviewing game. As many of you may have become aware, Amazon is suing more than 1,000 reviewers - and although yes, they are fake reviewers and I am an honest one, still, the climate for reviewing just got very, very chilled. Amazon is big guns and can obliterate small fry, and they also own Goodreads, IMDB, and probably other platforms I'm not even aware of. Reviewers at Yelp have also been sued for libel, and a negative reviewer of an academic book in France was sued for defamation a while back. It is getting crazy out there.

The reviewers who are being sued by Amazon are associated with the Fiverr website. I do writing-for-pay through Fiverr, too, although not reviews. I write articles and blog posts, mainly on business-related topics.

Although I will leave my existing content up wherever it is, I vow here and now NEVER to again post content or links to content at ANY Amazon-owned website, including Amazon itself, Goodreads, and IMDB. The corpocracy has really gone far enough for me. 

I will complete some reviews for books I have already finished, hard copies that have been sent to me, and content that I have actively solicited. However, the reviews will ONLY be posted at this site. Nowhere else: I will not even post links back to this site. 

Eventually, the site will just fade out. 

It is a very dangerous world.

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4 comments:

  1. Todd MasonOctober 20, 2015 at 1:44 PM

    I may be foolhardy, but I think ythis might be abn excess of caution...

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    Replies
    1. Patrick MurthaOctober 20, 2015 at 2:42 PM

      Quite possibly. But ten years ago, a married couple who were friends of my brother were named as "examples" in a file-sharing lawsuit. It ruined their lives. They never got back on track after that. They were only doing what millions were doing at the time. They paid for it. I have never forgotten. Hence, an excess of caution when I hear about lawsuits, especially when these involve big corporations suing individuals, training blunderbusses on fleas.

      Delete
  2. Alex AustinOctober 22, 2015 at 9:44 AM

    I'm sorry to hear that you've stopped reviewing. I just learned of your site, one of the few that welcomes literary among the numerous devoted to horror, fantasy and YA..I understand your caution. Good luck with your pursuits.

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  3. Patrick MurthaOctober 22, 2015 at 10:08 AM

    What Amazon is doing is suing a large number of users for violating the website TOS (Terms of Service). Not simply cutting off or restricting their accounts, not merely deleting the offending material, but SUING them. I have never heard of a website doing this before, and it opens up a frightening new set of possibilities. Because let's face it, who reads the TOS of ANY website? Do you know what you're agreeing to, or (in the case of Facebook) the rights you are signing away?

    The notion of huge corporations suing individual customers and users is so asymmetric as to be appalling. I'm surprised that more people haven't picked up on this element of the story.

    ReplyDelete

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