Hacker News Reader

Comment by gk1 | Hacker News Reader

Title is clickbait. This practice was banned in 2016 so should no longer be an issue, at least in the US.

Definitely still an issue in Italy, this [1] is from barely 2 weeks ago. From what the owner said in one of the many interviews on local press, they do it through the tour operator rather than directly: their contracts have clauses that hotels can invoke to be compensated if "offended", and in turn the operators do the same with customers.

Listening to the other side of the argument, apparently hotels are now routinely blackmailed by customers, who explicitly ask for special threatment "or else".

This sounds a lot like a classic "why we cannot have nice things".

[1] [ITA] http://www.ilrestodelcarlino.it/bologna/cronaca/hotel-multe-...

The blackmail issue is really just noise though. It's totally unlike traditional blackmail where someone can threaten to ruin your life by revealing crime or adultery or something. Every business has a handful of bad reviews, and it's no big deal.

The only businesses that can be upset by this are (1) those who are taking it too personally and (2) those which are getting no good reviews as counterbalance.

The first quoted instance is still apparently an ongoing case[1] as of this month, so it's not exactly settled.

[1] http://www.bcdemocrat.com/2018/01/04/former-abbey-inn-owner-...

Ok, we'll switch the title above to past tense, which leaves open the possibility that it still happens.

Why was it allowed in the first place especially with free speech being so important and constitutionally protected in the US ?

Because, in general, you’re free to enter into contracts that limit your rights if you so desire.

Not quite, you can only limit some behaviors, you can't for example sell yourself into slavery.

Obviously. This is why I said "in general".

In the US, speech cannot be punished by the government. The constitution says nothing about private entities or contracts that limit speech.

There are limits on what contracts can and can't cover in terms of free speech. Requiring silence is a common item, so zero reviews may been an option. However, requiring a specific type of review aka only positive ones is a tricky subject that was unlikely to be legal.

You can contract for people to tell lies even. That's what celebrity endorsement contracts essentially are, for example.

I don't think this has anything to do with free speech, but more about fair business practices.

> You can contract for people to tell lies even. That's what celebrity endorsement contracts essentially are, for example.

I think there are problems with casting it this way. You can get in trouble for making false claims in ads.

Hence the tiny text on the bottom of the screen about "paid actors" or similar. But again, that's about prohibiting unfair business practices, misleading advertising in this case. It has nothing to do with the legal capability of the actors to contract to tell lies, and nothing to do with free speech (except that it's a limit on the free speech of the actors and the company).

Everything is allowed unless it's prohibited. Legislators aren't seers, and courts only rule on real cases before them, not hypotheticals. So both the judicial and legislative avenues of lawmaking are mostly reactive.

This is almost always a good thing, as the underlying tradeoffs of a policy are more likely to come into focus once you have examples of real people on all sides of a real controversy, with concrete gains and losses.

What you'll find is that there's typically some very broad law on the books, e.g. banning vague categories of anti-competitive behavior. Then the lower courts will hear a bunch of cases of varying similarity, a few get appealed here and there, and you eventually end up with stronger guidance as to a more specific issue.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com