Night live to disencouraging donald trump from hosting the show. His divisive and racist rhetoric has very troubling and realworld consequences. Respect and dignity is cornerstones for our values. Perhaps this blender happened because currently there is no latino cast member on snl and only two in the entire history of snl. I hope the producers will consider how donald trump hosting snl will compromise the intigrity of their show. It will degrade the quality of snl humor because racism is isnt funny. It is lazy and cheap. Coming up, a hearing on sen censoring Online Reviews. And then a hearing on wild fires across the United States. Online Consumer Reviews and the Ways Companies try to censor them. Jan palmer held the hearing who is in trouble for giving a negative review. This is about on hour and 45 minutes. Morning. This hearing comes to order. Today we convene to exam a growing trend affecting consu consumers in the United States. Imagine you purchase something online and the product is not what you bargain for. You take to social media to post an account of your experience. You are threatened to immediately take down the review. Buried in the fine print of the terms and conditions was a clause prohibiting you from posting a negative review. The sad reality is it is happening every day across the country. Socalled non disparagement or gag clauses are forced on consumers and used to intimidate them. They are aagainst the people. We focus on increasing Broadband Adoption and increase the potential of the internet. But stifling contract terms undermine this. We have the ability to free information with whoever you like. What good is information if it has been sanitized to remove criticism. The practice is about a larger entity about constructive critiism. C Online Review sites and social media have given American Consumers a tremendous amount of power. Consumers place high val ley value on the experience of other consumers. Do some consumers abuse the internet with false reviews sometimes . Sure. But they have the ability to sue for defamation. Businesses should be able to offset phony reviews with positive assessments from happy customers. There are a number of growing businesses blocking through gag causes rather than responding negative criticism. We are joined by jan palmer who will share her experience against a company that sought a 3500 penalty because she told the truth about the service. They were able to challenge the abuse in court and persevere. They are far alone from their experience. A dentist included a clause in her contract and a report to anything the patient wrote about a dentist. When a patient posted Online Review about invoicing the company demanded it be taken down. The patient sued the dentist is the Court Awarded the patient nearly 5,000. Another case, a consumer who didnt receive her order from an online retailer informed the company she would report the matter to her credit card company. The company demanded the consumer pay 250 for violations of the fine print terms of sale which prevents a company from threatening to make a Public Statement about a retailer. The consumer filled a complaint and the court ultimately found in the consumers favor. Going a step forward, in a wedding contract one hotel went as far as to inform newlyweds they could be informed if any guest violated a gag clause by leaving a negative review. After this gag clause was reported in the press the Company Changed their mind. Our bill empowers the federal commission to enforce against the provisions. The consumer free gag act guarantees provisions against this. I am looking forward to moving the proconsumer legislation through the committee. We have a great panel here today. Companies want to muddle consumers. And these companies are using their size and unequal Bargaining Power to force consumers to sign these takeitorleaveit contracts. Sometimes they are just online pop up items that consumer clicks on to purchase a good or service on the internet. Almost no one reads them but they can have major consequences. You are bound by the fine print that lawyers are good at drafting and the idea that some companies are suing or threatening to sue customers for truthfully reviewing their Consumer Experience because of the despairage clauses in the content in the fine print is appalling. In a state like mine, florida, that is dependented on tourism, we want visitors to their their experience. Dependent businesses that do a good job should be rewarded with good comments and those who do not ought to be punished by telling the truth. They are sharing their opinion with other consumers. I think this hearing is timely, mr. Chairman, because of this issue in your bill brings up also a related issue that needs to be discussed. Just a few weeks ago, the Los Angeles Times reported that fiatchrysler was requiring consumers who wanted to receive on a car, they must in order to get that, sign a mandatory arbstration clause as part of the contract. So if the car is defective and kills or injurs that consumer, as was the case with toyotas sudden acceleration, or gms faulty ignition switches, or tecatas exploding airbags you cannot seek redress because of the take it or leave it arbstration clause. This type of provision is outrageous. Arbitration and beyond the automakers themselves, many dealers are trying to use these arbitration provisions to shield themselves. Theories these clauses are just another way to avoid accountability by silencing consumers. So yes, consumers ought to be able to write a negative review, consumers should have the ability to seek justice in a court of law when businesses fail to hold up their end of the bargain. Cannot continue to let people get off scott free. Thank you, senator nelson. I want to add a couple letters of support for legislation. This is from angie Hilary Clinton angie hicks from angies list. The Internet Association applauds todays hearing on the bipartisan bill introduced by several colleagues. American consumer institute, institute for liberty, rstreet has a letter of support, and another from a coalition that includes yelp and Public Knowledge and real self among many others. We have on the left, the senior vise president for global product at trip ad visor. The president of information and technology foundation. Jennifer palmer who is the one who one of the named plaintiffs in the case. Welcome and great tov you. We will start with mr. Medrows and please proceed with your foment. Confine it as close to five minutes as possible. Thank for inviting me to testify on what we believe is a an important topic. We very much appreciate your review of infrethe freedom act. I lead a team on trip advisor that is responsible for the collection, moderation, and display of travelers reviews. For those who dont recall what it is like to plan and book a trip prior to the advent of the internet lets rewind. The infrequent nature of travel, and importance we place on vacation was risky. You had to research and plan the trip on your own calling multiple airlines and hotels to check availability, or rely on a travel agent looking at b brochures. The internet has improved this decision. A poplar tactic among businesses is to use contractual leverage to silence critics. This harms reviews, those seeking transparency through others experience, and those businesses playing by the rules. Trip advisor host more than 250 million reviews covering more than 5 million visitors. We encourage members to share opinions, good or bad, on experiences at hotels, restaurants and attractions and strongly believe in their right to do so. We give all businesses the right to respond to reviews in order to insure consumers are given both sides of the story. We are far from the only source of Consumer Reviews. Americans are returning to websites to educate themselves and purchasing decision on everything from what doctor to visit to whom they should hire to remodel their kitchen. 70 of shoppers rely on Online Reviews more making a purchase. In the uk, 54 of adults rely on reviews and 70 of Online Shoppers found them to be more important than anything else. Consumer reviews are a critical part of todays marketplace. Consumer reviews are so open. This is a means to get critical reviews removed or stop them from getting submitted. Even those who read the clauses lack the leverage to have them reviewed. The intention behind the clauses is always the same to gag negative opinions. The exact language varies. Examples we have received from travelers include since bad reviews are detrimental we place a fine. If the hotel receives a poor review and is out of context or control of the Hotel Management a fine of 300 is charged on the credit card on file. Dealing with companies and individua individuals. Trip advisor has taken to warning travelers of the behavior and this is not a perfect solution and would be improved on the chairmans review act. This goes against everything we stand for. Just as the consumer can tell family and friends about the business in offline world, she has the right to share the experience online allowing businesses and other customers to learn and benefit there from. Whether when a business has a gag orderer, everyone is harmed. Even the business, doing the silence is harmed and loses the opportunity to gain from the experience of others. These types of clauses serve no purpose. We look forward to working with you and the entire committee ensure American Consumers are not prohibited from sharing their experience online or on internet. Mr. Nelson. Thank you. I appreciate being able to come before you to talk about the nondisparagement clauses. The Information Technology foundation is focused on policies to enable the internet economy to thrive. I want to raise three issues. The first is about economic theories and the economics behind this. There is long been a view in economics that are over the situation. When you go to a hotel, you dont know anything about the hotel other than what you see but the hotel knows everything. This market is asymetric information. They are underperforming economic welfare for everyone. Consumers and the overall economy. Economic Research Found that if markets dont perform effectively, if buyers cant accurately assess the product or value of the service before buying it. You go to a hotel and have no idea you cannot make an informed decision. Second, if an incentive exist for the seller to pass off a low Quality Service as a high quality one, clearly as the example shown that incentive exist for some sellers. Where they have a good time improving the probability. And fourth there is a deficiency of public Quality Assurance. It is hard to find independent asse assessment of quality. That is why online rating tools are so important. They are essentially the tool to solve this age old problem that bedevilled economic problems. They solve the problem because they provide a public Quality Assurance of that and let people know why and when there is poor quality. The second point is the issue of preemption. In many of these cases, Trip Advisor Hotel reviews in florida, many are nonflorida residents. A state might say we want to protect businesses not allowing this but they are hurting consumers all around because consumers everywhere use and contribute to these. It is a clear justification for federal action. The third would be what about the possible harms to businesses where there is a bad review. I think it has been pointed out that this bill would not prohibit companies from already using existing legal tools for defamation. It actually turns out that gets them better results with consumers because consumers believe the manager of the company is taking consumer complaints seriously and they are more likely to trust this. This was a study, for example, recently about hotels and found that regardless of whether reviews were neutral or negative, they began to receive higher ratings from guest after Hotel Managers started to respond to feedback. I have heard that from Hotel Managers when we did a study on hotels. They go out now and tell the managers they should respond online because it brings back trust. So i dont think we should worry too much about that. When there are cases of defamation and lies they are other methods. We support this legislation and believe it is very important online. Thank you. Next up is ms. Palmer. Share your story. Chairman thune, Ranking Member nelson, and members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to testify. My familys experience with being bullied over a negative review shows why we need this legislation. My husband ordered a couple trinkets that came to less than 20. They failed to arrive and we contacted the company from phone and email. We never received a call but got an email saying payment was never received. I posted a review and we moved on. John got an email from clear gear demanding my review be removed within 24 hours were we would be fined 3500 from the cause that quote banned taking action that negatively impacts clear gear didnt exist when we ordered the item and the fact john didnt write the review didnt matter. The clause didnt appear until three years after my review was posted. We were shocked and scared. I spent hours researching how to remove the review but the website had a policy of not removing them. John spent time explaining this couldnt be removed, the non disparage clause didnt exist and he didnt write the review. They responded writing they would send us to collection for 3500. Three months later, it appeared on his credit report. We immediately disputed the debt with the credit burrows with no success. Clear gear emailed us admitting they had confirmed the debt as valid. We cannot afford for hire an attorney. It would me be more than 18 months before johns credit was clean again. We only use financing for large purchases like cars in 2008 and 2011, our house in 2009 and medical bills not covered by insurance. This caused us constant anxiety, fear and humilitation when people asked who is clear gear and why do you owe them 3500. Because of the problems we were denied a credit card, delayed on a loan and deterred from buying a new home that would move us closer to workplaces. The worst came when we were denied emergency financing to replace a broken furnace. We were desperate wrapping our three year old son in blankets with temperatures dropping near freezing. I was terrified and too afraid to tell anyone for fear social services could take him away. We had to cut every expense and we were able to buy a basic furnace with cash at the end of the month. I contacted a reportt in Salt Lake City who did a segment on our plight and got us in contact with Public Citizen who represented us suing clear gear. They helped clear up johns credit and we won a default judgment. They never bothered to even show up. Throughout the ordeal, we only wanted two things. All traces of the actions be cleared from johns credit and to do everything we could to insure nobody else ever had to experience the nightmare we encountered. We Want Congress to ban this disparadi despa despadi despa despadi despa despairage clause. We are not the only ones who fell guilty to this. This needs to stop. Companies should earn reputation honestly with good products and services. I urge you to pass a bill that inhibits the causes and provides robust enforcement of the law. Thank you for sharing that and be willing to share the story with us. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about how congress can protect Consumer Reviews. Consumers reviews are important to the economy. Mark markets are stronger when consumers share experiences and guide consumers toward the best experience and away from poor ones. Some businesses try to suppress reviews from customers. These efforts are not legit. The freedom act insures every consu consu consumer can add their voice to the discourse. There are precedent to support existing laws protect consumers but i will explore two reasons why i think we need the Consumer Review act. It is not clear if courts will enforce anti review clauses. I use that to describe what other people are calling gag contracts or nondisparage clauses. Many judges will refuse to enforce the clauses because of the Public Policy or reason but judges also dont like to override contractual provisions so they are not guarantee to failed. I want to talk about a Vacation Rental contract that required tenants to agree they would not quote use blogs or websites for complaints anonymously or not. We dont know how many consumers were prepared by the clause from sharing their experience but we do know that two tenants did pose public reviews of the Vacation Rental. The court held reviews were not defamitory but they may have breached the contract. This means the antireview clauses exposed the tenants from liability for sharing the review. The consumer liability ability will allow vacation tenant and other customers have Legal Certainty to speak up. We also need this act because businesses are looking at ways to shape their online appearance. Anti review clauses will keep proliferating unless banned. The experience of the Health Care Industry illustrates how that might happen. In the late 2000 a Company Called medical justice sold form contracts to doctors and Health Care Professionals that