But as soon as mentioning an entity defers copyright to that entity, there is a problem. Consider ‘I drank Coca Cola, and i did not like it’. Or ‘the cleaner on 5th street once ripped my shirt’.
There are always cranks, but as everybody knows that, a few cranks do not a sullied reputation make – yet consider the situation where you really think your doctor fucked up. Why should you be barred from writing about it? Why should everybody else be barred from reading about it? Making a decision about which doctor to go to, especially with critical or costly procedures is not a thing lightly done, so why should the doctor with the best web-sanititation department look the best, and not the one with the least disgruntled patients?

You don’t have any rights regarding this material, nor the result of the research, no?

Tell your doctor that you’re doing some research (by being treated by him/her). The treatment you received is just like the DNA/antibodies that s/he ‘acquired’ – and they don’t have any rights to the result of the ‘research’, that is, your blog/comments.

Although this Medical Justice copyright approach seems like the kind of thing that wouldn’t stand up to Supreme Court scrutiny, on the grounds of free speech infringement and the invalidity of parts of contracts that attempt to compromise fundamental rights.

Regardless: http://www.no-f—ing-way.com

You are right that there is, and should be, the right of free-speech on the part of the patient. Certainly bad things happen and patients may want to share that. The problem is that the reverse isn’t true. Due to HIPAA rules, the doctor can’t disclose any information by way of a rebuttal. So what happens sometimes is that anyone with an axe to grind, right or wrong, gets to say whatever they want and the doctor’s hands are tied. I think the better solution is that, once a patient posts about their confidential medical condition on line, it isn’t confidential anymore and the doctor can at least defend him or herself.

It simply shouldn’t be allowed to sign away your copyright in anything you say about a person, basically in exchange for nothing (and I say “for nothing” because a doctor’s business is to treat patients, in exchange for monetary compensation: it isn’t like the patients are getting a discount for having their arms twisted to sign papers like this).

This is where doctrinaire libertarians go seriously wrong: they will argue with a straight face that people should be allowed to assign themselves into slavery, and the fact that they can’t do this is coercive, anti-freedom.

It paid off recently when the mobile company Three tried to charge me $250 to exit a contract “early”. I said there’s no way I would have signed up for the stated duration. They rather smugly said it was on the contract that I signed. So, not being totally sure, I asked them to send me a photocopy of the contract. Sure enough, there was my duration change on the contract, duly signed by myself and the lackey in the store.

It pays to read the fine print.

@Grant H, I couldn’t have said it better myself. While I don’t and wouldn’t participate in requiring this kind of contract, I think the concept of patients (many of whom aren’t paying, Joe) reviewing doctors is quite a different situation that movies or restaurants given the legal requirements and ethical/professional codes of conduct imposed on physicians.

I agree that in principle it isn’t fair for a patient to publicly complain about a doctor if a doctor can’t say anything back. But, I don’t think that any complaint by a patient should result in waiving privilege! What if all the patient complained about was, say, the doctor’s bedside manner? If I post something saying “Dr. Joe was really rude and unfriendly, and ignored me when I asked questions about his diagnosis” I don’t think that should mean that Dr. Joe can now publicly tell everyone what my diagnosis was, but perhaps he should be allowed to say something like “I wanted to explain the important parts of the diagnosis before answering questions, and I don’t think that I was being rude but this patient seemed stressed and may have perceived it that way.”

That kind of thing is probably hard to regulate, though.

Feinberg has written about what happend to hir, but hasn’t named the hospital because ze says they threatened hir with legal action that ze can’t afford to defend hirself against.

Anybody who believes that /doctors/ are in the weaker position has a lot of privilege in regards to health, class and gender.

Trans people need to be able to communicate about what doctors to see and which to avoid. So do people with specific illnesses. This stems from self-defence.

“anyone with an axe to grind, right or wrong, gets to say whatever they want and the doctor’s hands are tied.”

That isn’t quite correct. Right, the doctor can’t do anything. Wrong, the doctor can file a lawsuit and have it taken down and get damages. That is called slander and already protected by the law.

Note:

“The doctor can then send a DMCA takedown notice and have the criticism removed from the web without filing a lawsuit.”

This is so that the doctor can take down legitimate complaints. They can take down anything, true or not. This is a misuse of the copyright laws.

If a doctor asked me to sign something like this I’d find a new doctor. This is a gross abuse of patient rights. I am horrified.

I can believe that, but how is anyone going to stop them from abusing that power later if they get to call it copyright? My point is that if we’re making rules about this, we should make rules that keep things in perspective, not that have it completely one-sided one way or the other.

If I understand it correctly, this copyright thing would give the doctor the power to suppress any and all discussion about them, even if it was 100% true. So even if their intention is only to suppress completely wrong, libelous writing, then this still isn’t the right way to do it.

This evening I noticed that the NY Times changed the section of the article I quoted in my post, which originally read “The group Medical Justice, which helps protect doctors from meritless malpractice suits, advises its members to have patients sign an agreement that gives the doctor copyright over a Web posting if the patient mentions the doctor or practice.”

Their quote now says “The group Medical Justice, which helps protect doctors from meritless malpractice suits, advises its members to have patients sign an agreement that gives doctors more control over what patients post online.”

Obviously that’s a big difference. I looked for a correction notice but the NY Times hasn’t posted one. I’m kicking myself for not having copied the original article. However, others noticed this same quote (which I’ve linked to in my original post).

If the NY Times misquoted Medical Justice, they need to run a correction, not simply change the article without notice. I’m also wondering if the NY Times accidentally revealed the trade secret to how Medical Justice’s “tool” for dealing with online criticism.