Ask HN: Is it legal to create an open blacklist of people / record of debtors?

Is it "legal"? It very much depends on jurisdiction, but the answer is broadly "yes". The issue (as illustrated by other blacklist cases like Spamhaus v. e360) is that you can be sued under various guises for setting up a blacklist (esp one that could impact revenue generation), and while you are likely to succeed you'll need to be able to fund the litigation long enough for a judgement.

In the US, debt collectors generally can't tell anyone about a debt other than the debtor, their spouse and their lawyer. Whether the original creditor can publicize the debt varies state by state. That, along with the defamation/libel claims this kind of site would attract, makes building it legally onerous. It's probably not worth the hassle. The way to avoid not being paid by clients is with up-front and milestone payments, and a good contract.

The legalities are often less relevant than the realities.

The realities are that someone can sue you even with extremely poor legal arguments, however that lawsuit will cost you time and money. Someone who doesn't pay their debts won't likely sue you simply because you could then counter-sue them for the lost money (i.e. the debt). They also likely aren't in the same country/area as you so a lawsuit would be impractical.

The real "gotcha" is if you let other people put names on this list. As soon as you do that, you open yourself up to being sued for events and fights which you have no knowledge or involvement in. While there is legal protections for you publishing your own complaint, when you start publishing third party's complaints, you lose some of that...

I likely wouldn't, not because it will end badly, but just because it likely wouldn't be effective and would waste time/money. At worst I'd just publish a single google-accessible blog post with the info for a single incident (not other people's incidents/complaints).

Sorry to hear it, I think every consultancy and freelance dev with a few years experience has been there at least once. Usually when dealing with small businesses I will get one or two of these every year or so even though I try to filter them closely. Maybe I am a sucker sometimes, but it has always been a small business when it has happened to me, generally those with < $2M or so in annual revenue.

I am not a lawyer, but I am pretty sure it is illegal in the U.S. to publish the names (or details) of people and companies with bad debt. You are free to report them to collections, credit agencies etc, but publishing their names or other details is, I believe, a FCRA/FDCA violation. While generally applied to individuals, from what I understand it also protects corporations (but again, I am not a lawyer).

However, I would think publishing a list of businesses that you would not do business with again, like a black list of sorts wouldn't be illegal if you didn't say specifically why. Although I personally would not do this as the realities are it will make you look bad and potentially get you sued costing you money even though it likely would go no where.

FCRA = Fair Credit Reporting Act, FDCA = Fair Debt Collection Act.

Even if it was legal, not sure IANAL, I don't think it would be very effective.

Publish it like this:

Request: http://myblacklist.com/?firstname=Fffff&lastname=Llllll&comp...

Possible replies: {"status":"not found"}

{"status":"record found", "record_id":12345, "note":"Request more info at: retrieve-record@myblacklist.com"}

In "record found" case - allow requester to sign legal confidentiality and non-disclosure form before allowing to see more details.

This way no names are published open and you acquire a bit more of protection.

This is sort of becoming your own "credit bureau".

Talk to lawyers still about it.