This happened to me and I sent the lawyer a cease and desist letter.
He wanted me to take down my experiences I had with the company on my linkedin. After explaining to him that I have proof that I've worked on those projects the lawyers came up with bs reasons. I got angry for wasting some time of my life for proof of my work experiences so I sent him a cease and desist.
The loser sent one last email and I told him to get the fuck out of my life. And that was that.
I ain't ever using Zillow or Trulia.
These people are in alt-fact reality.
FYI, I'm do technology for the real estate industry, here's some back story.
In Real Estate there's a huge concern about "where is my data going" (meaning the listings, photos, etc). This is a big deal to the brokers and agents. I literally just watched an hour long webinar over lunch by Wolf Net about data syndication and every few minutes they were mentioning how they've earned and work to maintain the trust of the brokers and agents by being careful with the data.
Now, a significant number of agents and brokers HATE Zillow. There are entire sessions at the conferences about how to keep your listings off Zillow. The reasons are varied and I won't bore you with the details, largely it is because Zillow doesn't put the listing agent's details by the listing.
Zillow I imagine has to be very careful not to be seen by agents as releasing this information to other sources, or Zillow's lifeblood will cease to flow. They are teetering on the edge here and a perception by agents could cut off a lot of their data.
Zillow probably has to fight this fight. Even if they lose it. They are in a much better position if they say "Hey, we fought this and the courts said we had to", that is a defense against the agents and brokers. If they don't fight it, the sentiment in the RE community could quickly turn against Zillow and cause a lot of damage to their business. This is my speculation, I don't know the internal workings of Zillow.
What are the limits to what rights you can waive under the ToS of a website or app? If a website says you waive fair use, first amendment right, and your right to use your computer as you see fit for as long as you are using the website, who’s to stop them from kicking you off the website and suing you for breach of contract?
I’m kind of curious because I received a C&D from craigslist a few years ago (https://github.com/yonran/craigslist-shortcuts/blob/master/c...). Technically I was breaking the terms of service (after they revised the terms), so as I understood it, if I wanted to continue to use the website I had to comply with the terms, however onerous they were.
I find it funny that big corporations routinely bully small players into submission through these bogus legal shenanigans, but when Peter Thiel bankrolled a private individual in a legitimate, bonafide court case against a big media corporation, many people had ethical issues with it.
How is an individual with limited resources (money and time) supposed to ever hold their ground against $BIG_CORP?
Bummer. Great site, in an ironically snobby kind of way. I'd tell them to use Open Listings pages but we get similar takedown requests from our data providers (regional MLS associations) regarding shittylistings.com. They can revoke membership (and listings) pretty much at will. So while there's no strict legal argument against it, they probably got a vague threat from an MLS and were spooked. On that note, I'd be really interested in how their data licensing agreements work because I had heard that they pull from aggregators and not directly from MLS RETS hookups.
1. Zillow should have to pay a fine for getting the law so wrong.
2. There needs to be proper legal protections for people against Big Co. doing this. Maybe a third party set up to look over the C & D's issued to bloggers. I don't know how this should or would work, but something needs to change.
I can't attest to any legality of what McMansion Hell was doing. And I think she was well meaning in her goals--to keep people from buying and building oversized, poorly built houses--but there is still an underlying social class issue here. I was always hesitant to talk about McMansions with my friends, many of whom probably grew up in McMansions (and they already think I'm a snob).
Additionally, have you ever had a friend who came to you showing off a new purchase and you were tempted to tell them that there was an objectively better choice for them? If they don't take it personally and get offended (they probably will) then they'll at least feel really shitty and probably embarrassed. It's best to let them live in ignorant bliss.
Ok, so Zillow has no copyright claim to the images. The article follows that up by loudly and repeatedly reminding us that even if Zillow did have a copyright claim, that the use of the images falls under fair use.
However, is that really true? The article backs up most of its claims, except for the "fair use" one. The disclaimer on the McMansion Hell site claimed that they were used under fair use, but the author of the site is admittedly a bit unfamiliar with the law. I haven't seen an analysis of if it really is fair use from any of the coverage.
In my brief time dealing with this kind of stuff, the usual best response is to simply say "See you in Delaware." And put the ball in their court to escalate to a full blown lawsuit.
Vote with your wallet. Donate to the EFF. Boycott companies like Zillow/Trulia who behave like this and use their position to harm the community.
still alive on google image search!
My reply would probably be something like this, after checking it with a copyright lawyer:
Dear whomever it may concern at Zillow group,
As you do not have rights to the images are you authorised on behalf of the rights owners to issue DMCA take-down requests under title 17 of the United States Code under penalty of perjury?
Should this be the case I suggest you read Lenz v. Universal Music Corp., 801 F.3d 1126 (2015) in the 9th circuit which has just been refused certioari in the US Supreme Court (2017-06-19).
If you wish to continue this matter please submit a properly worded DMCA take down request.
Regards, ....
P.S. If you do continue this matter you obviously didn't read Lenz Vs. Universal and therefore I'll see you in court.
Here's what I don't get: why didn't McM Hell go to an attorney right away? This seems like a no-brainer case of fair use that any competent attorney could tell you in a free consult or less than 2 hours of billable time.
And, yes, the threat letter from Zillow is total BS. But that doesn't mean Zillow "doesn't get it". That's just what attorneys do. I thought everyone knew this.
I'm going to disagree with most of you (and most of the commentary I've seen) that McMansion Hell's assertions of fair use are easily defensible.
I come from a journalism background, where we had to wrestle with fair use restrictions quite often, and it turns out that fair-use claims when it comes to images are not as cut-and-dry as with, say, text.
I'm allowed to reprint a sentence from a book in a review about that book and claim fair use, but I'm not allowed to reprint the entire book, even if I'm reviewing it, and claim fair use. But with images, those who claim fair use are typically reprinting the entire work. That tends to be a problem, because one of the four prongs of the fair-use test is the amount of the original work used. Among the relevant questions here are: could the images have been shown at a lower resolution and still gotten the point across? Could only portions of the images have been shown and still gotten the point across?
Then there's the fact that she claimed in her official response that "this blog is my livelihood," which suggests that she's receiving income and is, essentially, operating as the sole proprietor of a business. Another one of the prongs of the fair-use test is the nature and purpose of the work, and you're more likely to prevail on this point if you're a nonprofit or can't be construed as a commercial operation.
I'm not saying that Zillow's threats have merits. I just don't think we should all be so quick to say, "Oh, well it's OBVIOUSLY fair use."