Former ACT Brumbies player Clyde Rathbone and his brother Dayne are taking aim at the last frontier of online reviews, setting up a new website which will allow you to rate other people online.
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The brothers say the site, Karma, will be "like Yelp or TripAdvisor for humans" in setting up an open encyclopaedia of reviews and ratings of individuals' reputation.
While the site is still in development, the basic idea is that users create a public profile for themselves, and review others, and those reviewed can then respond to both praise and criticism.
Mr Rathbone says the site will allow people to thank others who have made a positive impact on their life and also "alert other to the potential danger" of others.
"Karma's purpose is not to punish, but rather to promote accountability and drive positive change in the future,"
"We believe that Karma could help create more honest and transparent societies," the creators say on the website.
Karma's premise, evident in it's tagline "your real-world reputation, online", throws up just a few legal issues, however.
The burden of proving the truth of allegedly defamatory statements is on the defendant, rather than the person who believes they have been defamed.
And, people who post comments and the publisher are both open to defamation claims.
Mr Rathbone said he believes defamation issues that arise will be mitigated by forcing Karma's reviewers to use their own names.
Mr Rathbone said all participants will have to be approved by the website before they are allowed to review others, using systems employed by sites such as Airbnb.
"That is obviously one of the first potential concerns with Karma.
"We have quite a high level of identify verification built into the system, you will have to sign up as a minimum with a social media profile that has at least 50 friends, that has been open for at least six months," he said.
Mr Rathbone said while he will encourage those who feel they have been slandered to "work it out" with the reviewer, people can request the critical review about them be taken down.
But there is a catch - a digital tattoo of the retraction.
"If they are adamant they want it taken down, we will remove and censor the content, but we will make sure there is a record of that.
"Where the review may have appeared that will then be replaced with some text along the lines of 'Joe Bloggs has requested we remove this information'," Mr Rathbone said.
Online defamation is still murky legal territory.
In two recent cases social media users instead of the site have been faced with claims.
A former student was ordered to pay $105,000 for defaming his teacher on Twitter and Facebook and a WA woman was ordered to pay $12,500 to her estranged husband, because of comments she made about him on Facebook.
But websites themselves have also gotten into hot water in Australian cases.
In 2012, a Melbourne man won a defamation case against Google over search results that came up with his name.
The Judge did note, however, that this related to their failure to remove the results.
Ironically, of the many challenges in establishing the startup, the Rathbones said they had an unpleasant run-in with a Russian developer.
They then blogged about it on Tumblr and wrote a review of the man on their new Karma website.
The post was subsequently removed by Tumblr, which the Rathbones said left them more sure than ever that there was a "real need for better information about people, and for more transparency and accountability online".
Karma is set to launch in June.
