http://kitchenette.jezebel.com/yelp-downgrades-restaurants-r...
> Instead, they’ve declared that legally, Yelp is entirely allowed to extort restaurants. In case you’ve forgotten, almost exactly a year ago, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that Yelp was well within its rights to extort restaurants. As above, Yelp desperately and frantically claims they don’t actually do this because to admit to what they’re widely accused of would be to pull back the curtain on the shell game that many, many restaurant owners believe is Yelp’s core business model. The first part of the above statement is thus simple PR sleight of hand; the lawsuits have been dismissed, but not because they’re not true—because legally, Yelp is perfectly free to engage in whatever extortionist practices it feels like.