Streisand Effect : restaurant sues a bad review and gets bad publicity

In France, you're allowed to write a bad review about a restaurant in your blog, but apparently, you're not allowed to be referenced by Google too high, or you could get sued.

Photo used in the original post

This is what happened to Caroline Doudet, under the name "L'Irrégulière" on her blog Les Chroniques Culturelles, when she shared her disappointment about a dinner she had at Il Giardino in Cap Ferret, southwest of France. She deleted the blog post after the judgement, although it is still accessible on archive.org. For those who can't read French, the opinion column is titled "The place to avoid in Cap Ferret: Il Giordano", it is a chronological description of what happened that evening, from the moment they entered the restaurant until the check and finishes with "I incite you to blacklist [the restaurant] if you come in the area" followed by the address.

Her complaints in the whole post are numerous: bad service (with multiple examples), unfriendly and non-business-minded owner, low quality meals. Her points are backed by examples and we can feel the unpleasantness of the dinner through the words.

Ten months later, the disappointed customer got fined 2,500€ for "denigration" (1,500€ for the restaurant, 1,000€ for the justice fees) and constrained to change the title of her blog post (as I mentioned earlier, she decided to delete it altogether instead).

The restaurant, primarily but non-exclusively serving pizzas, thought they had won. That dreadful publicity, ranked on the first page on Google searches, was doomed to disappear. That was without thinking of the repercussions of that conviction. Media recounted the judgement. To nobody's surprise though, potential customers were not happy with the decision and started giving bad reviews on websites like TripAdvisor (with one listing it as Streisand favorite restaurant and grading it one star out of five a few days ago) or on Google Plus (average of 1.3 out of 5 after 194 reviews).

For those unaware, this is called the Streisand Effect. By trying to censor something they considered bad (reportedly, before the judgement, the page had been read less than 500 times), they created a negative internet buzz that reached hundreds of times that number.

A little piece of advice to the owner: the best response to that review was not to censor it, but to prove it was wrong by providing a good service that would call for good reviews. Free speech, even though attacked from all sides, is a concept that people are very attached to, and any blow towards it will probably have a negative effect on the attacker. I'm even sure that if the fine had been higher, Caroline Doudet wouldn't have had to pay it but the internet would have organized to help her raise that money.

This is one of the most noticeable market effect. I know I won't ever go eat in that restaurant. Without that judgement, it was possible. Thanks to the defense of free speech, I got to read that blog post that I would never have read otherwise. You'll never see me, Il Giardano.

French anti-Amazon law

Today came into effect a law here in France that is nicknamed "anti-Amazon law". Of course, the law doesn't cite Amazon, but the intentions behind the text was clearly and loudly announced to protect small bookstores against the international online competitor.

To have a full understanding of the story, a little background is probably needed, especially for those who have no knowledge of french laws about books. A few decades ago, politician were afraid that small bookstores would be destroyed by the competition of big malls that could sell books for a lower price. So, the government established something called "le prix unique du livre". It can be translated to "book's unique price". In effect, it means that when a book is first published, an advised price is settled, and it is forbidden to sell it for less than this price minus 5%. (Example: settled price 10€, nobody can sell it for less than 9.50€)

So, for a little more than 30 years, there's been no concurrence in France on book prices. As often though, the intended protection for bookstores never existed. The rate at which they disappeared is the same as in any other comparable country, where such laws didn't exist. The only everlasting effect was then that the lack of competition on book prices artificially keeps them at a higher level than in the US for instance: a net loss for the French reader.

Then Amazon came into our lives. The French version of the website still followed the local laws and applied the "no-less-than-5%" rule. To make their service appealing to their intended customers, they instated a free delivery for books, first on all order above twenty euros, then, a few years later, on all orders.

The same way it is anywhere else in the world, Amazon.fr is now a leader in the world of book selling in France. They achieve that by offering their customers what they want: prices as low as possible, an enormous catalog of items and a system of reviews and advice for finding your next purchase. Bookstores, for the most part, are still struggling.

Politicians then had a new great idea a year or so ago. "Let's try to slow down Amazon and bring back the readers to small bookstores." That's what lead to the new law voted two weeks ago. What the text of the law number 2014-779 of July 8 of 2014 (pdf) says -- my own translation:

 "When a book is delivered to the buyer and is not picked up directly in a bookstore, the selling price will be the price settled by the editor or the importing agent. The seller can remove 5% of this price off the delivery fee he chooses, without being able to make it a free delivery."

 A direct attack towards e-bookstores, Amazon in the first place. Today's reply by Amazon France probably surprised no one but the politicians behind that law. They announced on their website than sadly, they can't apply the 5% discount on the books they're selling, and they can't apply a free delivery to their orders. Instead, they decided to set the price to 0.01€ for the delivery.

Let's have a quick look at the actual effects of that law.

• Prices online have increased to reach the level they are in actual bookstores. 
• Delivery is still artificially free. 

For the customer, books more expansive, for Amazon, a raise in revenue of 5% on each order. Maybe the orders will decrease by a tiny amount, but overall, I think they'll gain money out of this. Because ordering books online is convenient, and that's nothing a bookstore can compete with.

The big error that bookstore owners and politicians make here is that they want to be on equal foot with Amazon. But that is simply impossible. Logistics and stocks are both in favor of the multinational company. That doesn't mean that physical bookstores have to disappear. But here's an advice, don't try to compete with Amazon with lobbying for new laws. Adapt!

http://librairie-expression.com/

I actually like bookstores. I like to wander in their alleys to try and find new novels to read. From what I've seen on the internet, a lot of people feel the same. I don't want them to disappear, and for that, there's one solution that the US bookstores should think of also. Adapt your offer. Specialize in certain genres, and personalize your offer, your advice. Adjoin your store to a coffee shop, a tearoom or just a reading room with a few baked goods. These are just the first ideas that pop in my head, but I think that's the way to go.

These are services that Amazon can't offer and they won't be able to compete with you.

The (Real) New Beginning

My new year's resolutions have turned out to be impossible to follow. Work, moving out, refereeing, and just daily life. I have spent the last six months not writing at all. January hasn't been my rebirth, surprisingly July has. In the middle of the FIFA World Cup, I started writing again.

I set myself a weekly routine that I will try to follow as much as I can, and that very blog post is part of it. Every Thursday, I will publish a new blog post on here, about anything that I will think is interesting enough to be shared. Other tasks are writing at least six hundred words on Mondays and Tuesdays, and maybe on Sundays. Fridays will be dedicated to the rewriting process for stories that need to be edited and rebuilt.

My Wednesdays will be about another one of my goal, still related to writing, but on another level. I'm creating a website that allow people to share their own Science-Fiction and Fantasy short stories online. The site will allow feedback in the means of commentaries and grades. I will first develop it in French, and depending on its success and my motivation, I probably will transpose it to English a few months after the French version's first launching.

That website has been on my mind for a while, and I think my new motivation to write and to develop that website has been brought by the purchase of my new laptop. I only had a desktop before, which always fulfilled me as a gamer, but the freedom a laptop gives you to work wherever you want was something I needed, I realize now.

I haven't mentioned what my Saturdays will be about: nothing. To be more precise, I won't impose myself anything to do of that kind on Saturdays. I will enjoy the company of my beautiful wife and my silly cat. If inspiration strikes me, I'm not stopping myself from writing or working on the website, but I think Saturdays will very much be about relaxing as much as possible.

I still have a job after all, I'm still a soccer referee, and a soccer player. I'm still a gamer, even though my implication on video games have decreased a lot during the past few years. But I'll always enjoy a good Starcraft, Football Manager or even an oldie like Baldur's Gate.

I mentioned my wife earlier, and I need to say that I am very proud that her photography business makes her people, even if it's not always easy, doing all she does in a foreign language, in a foreign country. You can see her work on her website and on Facebook. Amazing is one of the words that describe it. (Example on the left).

Enough ramble for tonight. See you next Thursday, or you can insult me if I don't write another post next week.

One resolution, a few goals for the new year

2013 was a very difficult year to go through. In spite of my new job, the financial struggles have paved our road with no breaks, and when the light could be seen at the end of the tunnel, some new unforeseen problems would come up. That ended up with a third flat tire of the year on December 31st.

I've decided that I won't let that slow me down in my writing. Years ago, I used to write regularly enough that I had a few short stories (some not that short) saved on my computer. I lost it all the hard way when my hard drive died and I had no backup of everything I had written.

2014 will be a rebirth. My resolution is to write daily. No matter on what subject, on what medium, for what purpose: a minimum of 600 words a day will be my requirement. These words can go towards posts for this blog, short stories or maybe even for bigger tales. This number can seem rather low, but it is only a minimum. The challenge will be not to miss a day, with my daily job, my personal life and my other activities - I think there of refereeing and reading.

Linked to that first quantitative goal, another will be to have at least one story finished per quarter. So, on December 31st of this year, I will need to have at the very minimum four full stories - beginning, middle and end.

Still related to the writing process, one blog post a week minimum. I want this blog to allow me to improve my English writing skills, and to express myself freely.

Finally, I want to challenge myself on another level. Creating full stories is good, but I want to submit at least one story to a professional editor - more likely a magazine or a website. For 2014, submitting will be enough. I guess acceptance will be a goal for 2015.

"Slowly, but steadily!" will be my motto.

Disorganized thoughts for the end of the year

This is going to be kind of a messy blog post. The end of the year is coming, and that week has been pretty busy and different due to the fact that I was off of work and that it was the week of my wife and I's wedding anniversary (the two being related since I took the week off because of the anniversary).

 So, for our big day, on Tuesday, we decided we would go to England. It was Dixie's first time there (due to struggles with the French administration to get her "Titre de séjour" delaying her first crossing of the Channel). We had a wonderful English breakfast in Dover after crossing in a car-ferry. Driving on the "wrong" side of the road was a real experience (not saying more about it...).



We then took the road to Leeds Castle in Maidstone. We arrived in a deep fog that cleared out toward the end of our visit. The gardens and the atmosphere there were really enjoyable. Being a big kid, I ended the visit with a life-size maze.

We finished with a long walk and shopping in Canterbury. We stopped in a tearoom wondering how to end our stay in the city where we met an older couple. The lady was from New Zealand and and the man from Boston. They suggested us a few places to go and see and when the man had to leave, the woman stayed and entertained Dixie with English conversation.







Overall, we had a perfect stay in great landscape and cities and I think our  two-year anniversary was a success.

The rest of the week was filled with paperwork (health insurance), reading a lot (I finished the first book of the Hunger Games trilogy, while still reading A Clash of Kings and La Révolution des Fourmis) and Dixie had a Christmas photoshoot. You can check some of the amazing photos out at this address. You can also visit her website. It's worth having a look at it.

To finish on a sports note, Liverpool annihilated Tottenham and Lens won its first game away in more than three months, so that was a good weekend. Also, I had a physical test on Saturday (3200 meters, switching between 150 meters at fairly high speed in 30 seconds followed by very slow pace of 50 meters in 45 seconds). I did that test on a 400 meters track, but it was very slippery and I slid at the end of my third lap. I'll have another try in January. I also reffed a women's soccer game today, and Dixie said these women would beat up most of my teammates if we were playing against them. I can't say I disagree much.

Anyway, that was my rambling for the day. The three photos at the beginning are of course taken by my beautiful, and I incite you once more to go check out her website and facebook page.

I love you, Dixie! Happy two-year anniversary!

Why I am a libertarian

I have not always called myself a libertarian. To be honest, a few years back I didn't even know the word. I have always felt a strong admiration for the concept of freedom.

I've been raised in a far from wealthy family, who struggled every month to make ends meet. Historically, the whole of my family has also always leaned to the left side of politics, sometimes very left. In certain ways, I follow them. In many others I don't. Libertarianism is neither left nor right.

I had preconceived beliefs that led me to doubt the fact that freedom could be the most efficient response to some problems in the world. Over the years, after hours and hours of reading, studying, questioning, I am deeply convinced of the efficiency of liberty.

In addition to that, on a philosophical note, I believe freedom to be the absolute highest moral value to fight for in the world. I'm now going to list three illustrative examples that are at the core of my libertarianism, among tens of others that I might expose in another post someday.

1. Freedom of Speech

Strange it is that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free speech but object to their being "pushed to an extreme", not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case.

 John Stuart Mill

I don't know anyone who would say that Freedom of Speech is a bad thing. But I've heard and seen so many times comments like "Of course freedom of speech is important, but hateful Nazi websites should be shut down". If Freedom of Speech is not complete and unconditional, then it doesn't exist.

If you only advocate Freedom of Speech for the opinions that you support, you don't advocate it at all. I despise Nazi people as much as anyone ever could (in addition to having awful racial beliefs, they are huge defenders of an all powerful state), but I would never censor anything such a person would have to say by law. That doesn't mean that I endorse their beliefs. If an opinion of that type were to be published on any post of my blog in the comment section, I would delete it. I don't want to relay these comments on my blog. And that is in perfect agreement with Freedom of Speech. This is my blog. If I decide I don't want to see something appear on it, it's my right to delete it. I don't want to be associated with it. If that same person creates their own blog to publish these concepts though, I would have nothing to say.

2. No laws can abolish a contract between consenting adults

The whole duty of government is to prevent crime and to preserve contracts.

Lord Melbourne

The key word in that quote is "whole". Government has no other duties than these two.

Nowadays, politics are trying to manage everyone's life. The main argument for that is usually to "protect" people. Most of the time though, it's to protect them from themselves. It is NOT any government's job. There's so many examples of that type. Most of them seem very good at first sight. Let's take minimum wages laws: higher wages obviously lead to people with a better financial situation. If the wages are high because of contracts agreed on both parts, that's exactly what it means. Sadly, if wages are raised by law only, there come the multiple drawbacks.

First, a legal minimum wage means that all the activities that are worth less than the foregoing wage will simply disappear. Out of the legal setting, that is. Moonlighting will expand instead. People who have no skills that are worth the legal wage still need the money. Second, an increase in a minimum wage by law that doesn't reflect in an increase in productivity only leads to one thing: inflation. The employer that needs to legally increase wages with no increase in productivity will reverberate his higher costs on his prices. Conclusion: some people (the less skilled) can't find a legal job anymore, minimum wage workers are better paid, but inflation made overall prices increase.

3. Still protecting you from yourself : Drugs

If the government can’t keep drugs away from inmates who are locked in steel cages, surrounded by barbed wire, watched by armed guards, drug-tested, strip-searched, X-rayed, and videotaped – how can it possibly stop the flow of drugs to an entire nation?

Ron Crickenberger

This quote only shows the utterly inefficiency of the War on Drugs. That's the utilitarian argument for the legalization of drugs. Personally, I think drug should be legalize even if the War on Drugs was efficient.

I don't do drugs. Never have, never will. Personal choice, not because it's illegal. If drugs (and I mean all drugs) were legalized, I still wouldn't take it. And I'm sure that most people are the same way. But even if some did... What's wrong with that? You can morally disapprove all you want, a drug user only harms himself. It's his choice. He's responsible for that choice. If someday, he harms someone else, either on drugs or not, he'll be responsible for it. How many people are in prison and have never harmed anyone else but themselves?

~~~~~~~~~~~~

These are just a few small examples of what I believe in and why I define myself as a libertarian. I am open to discussion. The comment section is there for you.

On my golden bookshelf

Since I was a little kid, I have been an avid reader. I always had a book in my hands. Sometimes more than one. Everywhere my parents would bring us, a family event, a day at the beach, a visit to the doctor, I would be seen reading.

In my first blog post about my taste in literature, I decided I would make a short list of my favorite novels or series of novels. It won't be exhaustive, or even close to being exhaustive, but I believe you will learn to know me a little better by learning about my tastes.

One of Agatha Christie's best work in my opinion. A "huis-clos" (I'm french after all) with 10 characters in the beginning, a number that quickly thins down as the murders pile up. Who is the killer? Very entertaining. I first read it when I was around 15.

Philip K. Dick was an amazing writer with a twisted mind. The Man in the High Castle was the first Alternate History story I ever read. And what a first! Nazis and Japanese have won World War II and divided the US into two territories. Somewhere though, a mysterious man wrote a book. It narrates the victory of the Allies against the Axis...

Mind Vampires are real. They love to play. The world is their chessboard. Anyone can be a pawn. From Nazi Germany to 1980s Georgia, these "vampires" are restless, amoral and extremely violent. Can regular human being overcome these superbeings?



First item of the Mars Trilogy, Red Mars describes the trip to Mars and the first steps of the colonization of the red planet. This novel is a highly acclaimed hard science piece of art. Kim Stanley Robinson offers us one of the biggest dreams of humanity in written words.


As I said, that list is far from being complete. It's a first insight into my tastes in storytelling. Some other books will come in blog posts to come.

What are your favorite novels?