> The business sued [..] and subpoenaed Yelp to learn the identities of the anonymous reviewers. Yelp repeatedly refused to respond to it, however, leading the trial court to hold Yelp in contempt.
My first thought was, "Gee, that's either lazy or clueless of Yelp!" IANAL; was there a better strategy for Yelp, presuming they wanted to fight user info disclosure at all costs?
When you receive a subpoena that you don't believe is proper, what you are supposed to do is file a motion to quash the subpoena. Ignoring the subpoena is not usually going to go over well.
You can be in favour of a particular result in a court case for reasons of supporting a particular outcome in general, without any need to be biased in favour of any of the participants in particular.
IANAL, don't use Yelp, have never read their agreements, and don't know if this situation could even be construed to be a criminal investigation.
Isn't this a civil investigation?
Their privacy policy is very easy on the courts.
In fairness to Yelp, their privacy policy can hardly say "we won't give your data up in response to a subpoena", because if the subpoena was legitimate they'd be in contempt. Yelp can certainly challenge the validity of a subpoena, but that's not something they would be putting in a privacy policy.