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Zillow Threatens To Sue Blogger For Using Its Photos For Parody (theverge.com)
Kate Wagner is facing potential legal charges by real estate Zillow for allegedly violating the site's terms of service by reproducing images from their site on her blog. Wagner's blog is called McMansion Hell -- a Tumblr blog that "highlights the absurdity of giant real estate properties and the ridiculous staging and photography that are omnipresent in their sales listings," writes Natt Garun via The Verge. From the report: A typical McMansion Hell blog post will have a professional photo of a home and / or its interior, along with captions scattered throughout by Wagner. She also adds information about the history and characteristics of various architecture styles, and uses photos from the likes of Zillow and Redfin to illustrate how so many real estate listings inaccurately use the terms. Under each post, Wagner adds a disclaimer that credits the original source of the images and cites Fair Use for the parody, which allows for use of copyrighted material for "criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research." In a cease and desist letter to Wagner, Zillow claims Wagner's reproduction of these images do not apply under the Copyright Act. Additionally, the company claims McMansion Hell may "[interfere] with Zillow's business expectations and interests." As a result of the potential lawsuit, Wagner has temporarily taken McMansionHell.com down. In a statement to The Verge, Zillow said: "Zillow has a legal obligation to honor the agreements we make with our listing providers about how photos can be used. We are asking this blogger to take down the photos that are protected by copyright rules, but we did not demand she shut down her blog and hope she can find a way to continue her work."
Parody is fair use and Zillow can suck it.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
... in 3, 2, 1...
Just leaving what I already wrote on Gizmodo's post here:
Yeeeaaahh.... unfortunately, and specially because of the comments on the matter, I don’t think Wagner has a chance here.
Well, not that I know a whole lot on law, but afaik, fair use only has a chance if she didn’t admit that she was turning a profit on it (directly or indirectly). And even so, photography can be pretty tricky on those matters.... fair use usually won’t stick in cases like this one.
Very rare exceptions for very famous artists with a huge legal team to defend that there was substantial difference in the usage versus the original work... see here: https://www.theverge.com/2015/...
It’s even more damning if MacMansion Hell was making predominant use of Zillow content. Say, if you had a humour website with occasional Zillow content that did not focus solely on satire of their content but more on overall criticism of general architecture found throughout the web, things could be a bit more in the grey... or more accurately, perhaps Zillow going after the blog wouldn’t translate to taking everything down.
But here’s a quote:
Somebody infringed my copyright. What can I do?
A party may seek to protect his or her copyrights against unauthorized use by filing a civil lawsuit in federal district court. If you believe that your copyright has been infringed, consult an attorney. In cases of willful infringement for profit, the U.S. Attorney may initiate a criminal investigation.
https://www.copyright.gov/help...
The “willful” part is key, but not in the way most people think of. Claiming ignorance on the law, specifically about copyright, usually does not absolve you. It has more to do with getting bogus licenses, works with unclear status, and chain of command (as in I did this for my publication because they told me they had the rights).
And the thing is... for parodies and satire in fair use, the content infringed must be the direct target of it. Subtle difference, but Wagner wasn’t making satire or parody of the photographers’ work, Zillow’s service, or something in the effect of a criticism of cultural tendency. She was using the work done by others to make... architectural criticism, was it?
Nothing against the blog or Wagner, just my understanding of it. Sounds like it’s best for her to abandon the idea and go for something else, or negotiate with Zillow and/or photographers if they are even willing...
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:zFONMlsRjcgJ:www.mcmansionhell.com/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
What ever happened to FAIR USE????????
A lot of brain.
Pure genius, Wish I would've found it before the Zillow arseheads destroyed it.
I had my house photos from a Craigslist ad suddenly appear in a zillow listing WITH my copyright notice on them(!). I attempted to contact Zillow with no success. Zillow seems pretty one-sided (aka crooked) if they suddenly find "their" photos valuable while they automatically seek out and siphon photos from other sites without permission.
I was checking it on wayback and Google cache and it is a funny site. https://web.archive.org/web/20... or http://webcache.googleusercont...
I love reading mcmansion hell.
For those who haven't seen the site, a typical post consisted of a set of images from a real estate listing with mocking text overlayed. Things like "art from a best western", "how many stuffed animals died to make this couch?", and "color swatch: unholy diaper change". Between these images were pieces of text that sometimes went into more detail about why particular things weren't good architecture.
There were also many posts about architectural history and theory, as well as posts in the 'Mcmansions 101' category, which were equally sassy and very educational.
To me, it looks like her site easily passed the four fair use tests, and skimming through Zillow's terms of use page I didn't see anything that she blatantly violated. afaik, Zillow doesn't actually hold any copyright on most of the images posted to their site. The terms state they do have license to do whatever they want with them, but not that ownership is transferred to them. Not sure if Zillow could enforce copyright on someone else's behalf... I don't know the nuance here, and I would love to hear Zillow's specific reasoning.
They may also just be bluffing, in the hopes that Wagner would rather give up on the site rather than risk an actual lawsuit. Some big companies will file lawsuits not because they can win on merit, but because they can bankrupt the defendant with court costs. It's scary to be on the receiving end of something like that. As much as I would love the site to continue, and see a free speech victory, Wagner may decide it's not worth the effort and risk.
Nub.
Fair use is based on a multi-factor test. It is evaluated by a court in the context of a lawsuit.
Even if you win, it will cost you a minimum of around $50K+ to defend if the copyright owner claims it isn't fair use and sues you. It will cost more if you lose.
Real lawyers write in C++
Both parody and political statements are usually protected by fair use and other laws.
But that still doesn't prevent a deep-pocketed prick from dragging you through the court system using well-paid and intense lawyers whose goal is to wear you down.
Table-ized A.I.
First, Zillow has invoked the Streisand Effect. A previously unknown blogger suddenly gets tons of media attention, and Zillow gets bad press.
Based on her newfound popularity, the blogger can start a go fund me to pay for any legal expenses to fight this slam-dunk of a fair use case.
There is no upside for Zillow even if they win. I certainly have no intention of visiting their site, and will redirect their traffic to 0.0.0.0 in /etc/hosts.
I'd cover 2% of that and I'm sure 50 other people would step up to do the same.
OK. So set up a nonprofit or a coop to to provide fair use defense and/or IP insurance.
Real lawyers write in C++
First, Zillow has invoked the Streisand Effect. A previously unknown blogger suddenly gets tons of media attention, and Zillow gets bad press.
“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
--Oscar Wilde
There is no upside for Zillow even if they win. I certainly have no intention of visiting their site ..
I doubt you are in the market. For myself, I would feel much more comfortable listing with a company that I know would do its best to stop smarmy little SJWs making fun of my house on tumblr just because it's too large, and has too many interesting architectural features, for them to afford.
You signed this post? Really? Fucking dolt.
No, you're a complete moron who hasn't a clue how Slashdot moderation works.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Add Zillow to streisandeffect.com
Requiem for the American Dream
I agree, archive.org shouldn't delete their archives just because a site gets taken over by some squatter who doesn't want their squatting pages cached. In fact, you would think that sites disappearing from the web is exactly the type of thing archive.org would be intended for.
I would have left the fucking site up. Zillow can suck on my pole.
Yesterday at least the main page was accessible in the internet archive. This morning,that page is no longer available. So, it looks like the new site just added a restrictive robots.txt? There were three crawls from yesterday in the archive that each had the new site with the black-background main page, so the site was being crawled frequently just now.
Or perhaps the archive itself has been pressured to make the content not accessible?
In any case, it is sad that domains that are let go can have new owners buy them and put up a robots.txt and the internet archive stops making available the old version of the site from the previous owner (probably not the case here, just a reminder of what can happen to our history).
Whatever the merits of the copyright claim, this does show how much we rely on archive.org to check what was going on and also how it is (politically) a single point of failure in that sense.
A different perspective on robots.txt:
http://www.archiveteam.org/ind...
"What this situation does, in fact, is cause many more problems than it solves - catastrophic failures on a website are ensured total destruction with the addition of ROBOTS.TXT. Modifications, poor choices in URL transition, and all other sorts of management work can lead to a loss of historically important and relevant data. Unchecked, and left alone, the ROBOTS.TXT file ensures no mirroring or reference for items that may have general use and meaning beyond the website's context.
Precisely one reason comes to mind to have ROBOTS.TXT, and it is, incidentally, stupid - to prevent robots from triggering processes on the website that should not be run automatically. A dumb spider or crawler will hit every URL linked, and if a site allows users to activate a link that causes resource hogging or otherwise deletes/adds data, then a ROBOTS.TXT exclusion makes perfect sense while you fix your broken and idiotic configuration.
Again, Archive Team interprets ROBOTS.TXT as damage and temporary madness, and works around it. Everyone should. If you don't want people to have your data, don't put it online."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Parody is fair use and Zillow can suck it.
Are you willing to pay McMansion's lawyer several hundred dollars per hour to defend this principle?
From the little I saw in a link, I believe she should lose. The claim of parody or critique only applies to the work that is parodied or critiqued. From what I saw she is using the photos to critique the architecture. If she was critiquing the photos or parodying them then that would allow for the fair use protections. If that is the case in some instances then she should be protected in those instances only. But everything I saw was just critiquing the houses themselves.In that case she is simply using the photos rather than taking her own.
So if someone wishes to present a photo of the Mona Lisa in order to critique the Mona Lisa then they will have to photograph it themselves or acquire the rights to someone else's photo. Just wishing to parody or critique the Mona Lisa does not provide you protection from copyright on any and all photos or recreations of the Mona Lisa. You would have to parody or critique the actual work of creating the photo or other reproduction. In short she is not a photography critic. Or at least what I saw.
And yes this is an attempted end run around the permission to photograph inside people's homes that was acquired by the realtor. The owners gave permission only for the purpose of sale, not so someone could make fun of the house they are trying to sell.
Per the official Twitter post she's bringing the site back up. It's just take a long time due to all the photos and links. So it should back tonight.
She's also getting legal counsel to handle this. She makes her living from this blog and referrals she's received so Zillow is threatening her livelihood over fully credited pictures used in critique and parody. Given the publicity they've received for trying to stomp on a student blogger they've probably been advised to quietly drop this and stay far, far away from it in the future.
Using those pictures for criticism is under Fair use