Listen to this articleMinc LLC is the very first law firm in the world that is exclusively dedicated to the niche area of online defamation law. Below is our recent interview with Aaron Minc, Managing Member at Minc LLC:
Q: What were you doing before starting Minc LLC?
A: Before starting Minc, I was Of Counsel at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis and, before that, at Dinn Hochman & Potter, LLC in Cleveland. I worked for close to four years around some wonderful people and was fortunate to have handled some landmark cases. In one case, I forced one of the largest book publishers in the world to alter the memoir of their celebrity author, issue a public apology to the client, and publicly agree to pay the client’s legal fees. That case drew national media attention. Cleveland is where I grew up and I also studied law there at Case Western University School of Law.
Q: How did you get in to this niche practice area of Internet Defamation?
A: When I was a fairly new attorney only a year or two out into my legal career, one of my first real clients hired me to help take care of a defamatory post that was published about him on a website called RipoffReport.com. I wound up being able to get a court order against the individual who published the defamatory information online to have it removed from Google search results. I was the first attorney of five he had hired who had been able to do that and I thought it was pretty cool that I had gotten a great result. I realized a lot of people probably needed help with this and began blogging about it and focusing all my effort in this one area. The phone hasn’t stopped ringing since.
Recommended: The Pavemint App Is Changing The Way People Park
Q: Can you please tell us about your law firm and the specific challenge that you are addressing?
A: Our firm helps people and businesses who have been harassed or defamed on the Internet remove the negative information. Online harassment and defamation can encompass a wide scope, from cyberbullying, to revenge porn, to false and malicious professional reviews on sites like Yelp. The Internet can chew up and spit out good peoples’ reputations. We help people get their reputations back. We help them get their lives back. That’s very satisfying.
It’s hard to remember now, but the birth of the Internet was accompanied by a kind of very gauzy utopianism. One famous manifesto from the 1990s expressed the conviction that the Internet would “be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.” We now know that that vision was, to put it mildly, overly optimistic. The internet has made it much easier to be a consumer of goods and information. But the internet is also a free fire zone, where some of the worst qualities of humanity—like jealousy, revenge and spite—are given free reign. Anyone, anywhere, with a modem is free to attack or slander anyone else. They can do so anonymously and falsely, and it can be very difficult to set things right.
Q: Why do we need an Internet Defamation law firm these days?
A: Without being too flippant, the way the Internet has been regulated has turned it a kind of digital wild west. You need a hired gun to help protect you. And that’s where I come in.
I’ll try to flesh out that metaphor with some more internet history. When the internet emerged in the 1990s, regulators had to make a fundamental decision about how much legal liability search engines, websites, message boards and blog hosting services had for the content they published. If search engines were treated like traditional publishers, say newspapers or magazines, they could be sued for defamatory statements they put online. If, on the other hand, internet sites were treated like distributors, comparable to newsstands or bookstores, then they couldn’t be sued. The regulators opted for openness, and largely shielded search engines and sites from legal responsibility for what they publish. The downside to that freedom is that good, innocent people are subject to the kind of abuses which I’ve alluded to earlier.
Q: Tell us more about different kinds of services you’re offering?
A: On a typical day, I may meet with a young professional who has watched in horror as an old mug shot—perhaps from his wild college days— resurfaced on a site dedicated to dredging up and publishing old mug shots. Now the mug shot is damaging his career and the mug shot publisher is insisting on being paid a hefty sum to take the photo down. I might meet another client who has found that a former lover has posted an intimate video online. The client is mortified and overwhelmed with feelings of anger, remorse and guilt. Later I might meet with a business owner who is being unjustly attacked online in a review site, either by a competitor or by an acquaintance with a grudge. His sales have cratered along with his good name.
I’m in my 30s and part of a generation grew up on the internet. So nothing that happens online really surprises me. I’m not judgmental with clients, most of whom are very good, normal people. I view myself as a fix-it guy and I just try to solve their problems.
I talk to my clients and we devise an action plan. In some cases, it’s best to file a suit against the person who is responsible for putting the defamatory material online. It can sometimes take some intense cyber detective work to track down the author, but we’ve developed lots of expertise in that area. Other times we petition Google to de-index the offending material, so it doesn’t appear so prominently in searches. In still other cases, we find it’s simply the best to hold one’s nose and pay the online publisher to take down the damaging material. But even if you decide to pay, you need an experienced lawyer to ensure that the site follows through and removes the material in all the places where it appears online. Mug shots or revenge porn can turn up on multiple sites and I’m often surprised that my clients themselves aren’t always aware of all the places where the damaging material is lurking.
Recommended: The Travel Angel Mobile App Helps You Book A Trip, Rent A Car, Make Dinner Reservations And Much More
Q: What are your plans for the future?
A: For now, I intend to make Minc LLC the standard by which Internet defamation law firms are judged. It’s the very first law firm in the world that is exclusively dedicated to the niche area of online defamation law. I want to help more people recover their reputations and grow the practice. At the same time, I want to continue being a part of the national discussion on how the legal and regulatory system can better protect people who suffer collateral damage from the openness and lack of accountability of the internet. I will continue to be a voice for victims in speeches and in press interviews. I’ll also continue advancing the debate with articles in my blog, the Defamation Removal Law blog.
Activate Social Media:
