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Consumer Review Legislation, Litigation Appear On the Horizon

By Richard Raysman and Peter Brown

Viewing, evaluating, or even writing consumer reviews, has become a ubiquitous element of the present day Internet experience for most users, particularly in urban areas such as New York City, in which a surfeit of dining, nightlife and cultural options often render the city dweller powerless to make an informed choice without the recommendations of similarly situated consumers. The reviews of fellow travelers have been recognized by the media, and even Congress, as a materially beneficial aspect for most Web users. Authentic customer reviews manifest indicia of reliability and candor that are believed not to be present in reviews that are motivated by financial interest, though many review sites do contain numerous reviews from advertisers masquerading as objective consumers.

The most prominent of such sites, Yelp.com, which allows users to read as well as create reviews of myriad businesses they patronize or even happen to walk by on a given day, averages 142 million unique visitors per month, and its users post upwards of 90 million reviews per year. Types of reviewable business have expanded since Yelp's founding in 2004 to include local prisons, traffic lights and Yelp itself (as of this writing, the site maintains a rating of 2.5 stars based on 7,793 reviews).

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