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Zillow Drops Complaint Against Blogger After Backlash Over Copyright Claim (geekwire.com)
The blog "McMansion Hell" is back up and running days after Zillow threatened the site's creator, Kate Wagner, into taking it down. Zillow's decision to withdraw their complaint came soon after the Electronic Frontier Foundation announced it would defend Wagner pro bono. GeekWire reports: "We have decided not to pursue any legal action against Kate Wagner and McMansion Hell," a statement from the company said Thursday. "We've had a lot of conversations about this, including with attorneys from the EFF, whose advocacy and work we respect. EFF has stated that McMansion Hell won't use photos from Zillow moving forward. It was never our intent for McMansion Hell to shut down, or for this to appear as an attack on Kate's freedom of expression. We acted out of an abundance of caution to protect our partners -- the agents and brokers who entrust us to display photos of their clients' homes."
The Zillow response came in the wake of the week's events and a strongly worded letter to Zillow general counsel Brad Owens on Thursday (PDF here). EFF staff attorney Daniel Nazer said, "Our client has no obligation to, and thus will not, comply with Zillow's demands. Zillow's legal threats are not supported and plainly seek to interfere with protected speech." EFF said McMansion Hell was relaunching and no posts would be deleted, but that "in the interests of compromise, and because Wagner no longer wishes to use Zillow's website, she will no longer source photographs from Zillow for her blog."
The Zillow response came in the wake of the week's events and a strongly worded letter to Zillow general counsel Brad Owens on Thursday (PDF here). EFF staff attorney Daniel Nazer said, "Our client has no obligation to, and thus will not, comply with Zillow's demands. Zillow's legal threats are not supported and plainly seek to interfere with protected speech." EFF said McMansion Hell was relaunching and no posts would be deleted, but that "in the interests of compromise, and because Wagner no longer wishes to use Zillow's website, she will no longer source photographs from Zillow for her blog."
So they were using their lawyers to threaten the blogger under the assumption that the blogger wouldn't be able to afford to defend themselves (possibly knowing they were legally wrong). Blogger gets free representation - and suddenly the who's right/wrong comes back into the equation and they withdraw (because they are good corporate citizens).
Streisand Effect. But it's already too late, Zillow.
I don't give a fuck about their bullshit excuses. Zillow can go fuck itself. I will actively discourage people from using their site.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
FUCK ZILLOW and the corporatist cows they rode in on!
I hope you die them for the distress they caused
what to do. That C&D had NO value for Zillow. Even if the blogger couldn't get help and just went away, what good would it have done? What value would there be in shutting down McMansion hell? NONE. It's not any kind of threat to Zillow. It doesn't infringe on their business any. It makes people who can't afford million dollar homes laugh at the kinda-silly architecture while wishing we could afford to live in a house that stupid.
And now? Zillow, corporate bully, backs down the moment the other side has a lawyer. Making Zillow look EVEN WORSE because it's clear they knew they had nothing to go on, and if they proceeded, they'd get curb-stomped by the EFF.
stupid, Stupid, STUPID. Zillow just pissed away the good will (or at least inattention) of who knows how many people, because either they don't keep their lawyers on a short enough leash, or some exec takes it personally when they get mocked.
Either way, Zillow - get your shit together!
A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
So, she copied the pictures from Zillow. I can't blame them for protecting their IP. The complaints about this are just ridiculous.
There's plenty to complain about wrt Zillow like how they claimed my house here in Seattle was worth $300k less than I sold it for in just one day on the market. The house I bought and just moved to I paid $150k less than their ridiculous zestimate. Their zestimates are complete garbage.
Simple solution would have been to crowdsourced replacement photos. That way Zillow would have never had a pseudo claim in the first place.
You need to read up on Kate Wagner: https://hub.jhu.edu/magazine/2...
You're a Zillow employee, aren't you? Come on, it's ok.
Zillow has nothing to stand on. She can use part or all of the photo collection because parody is protected speech.
Zillow owns the copyright on their information collection (like the phone company copyrights the phone book), just a collection of facts.
But excerpts are fair use. She's clear, no wonder EFF jumped on this, total softball.
Zillow demanded that the blogger stop cribbing images from Zillow, citing agreements Zillow has with the photographers who own the copyrights. The blogger agreed to do so. Thus the dispute ends.
The headline here is click bait. A perfectly accurate headline would be "blogger agrees to stop unlawfully using copyrighted images without license".
So, this woman is a total bitch who takes photos of their homes people list on Zillow and use them to make fun of the home owners because she personally finds large cookie cutter homes tasteless. What business is it of hers to get off on making fun of other people's lifestyles.
I think Zillow should have sued the worthless piece of human refuse so far into poverty she'd never see another dollar. I'm very disappointed that they backed off.
As a long time supporter of the EFF, I won't be donating anything to them for a long while.
... so, are you a realtor, or are you Zillow's in-house counsel, Christopher Poole?
A Zillow employee would know people don't list on Zillow, they list pretty much anywhere else and Zillow just scrapes those listings for their own use.
The irony of them even mentioning copyright in a C&D letter has had my head spinning since the first story on this came out.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
What an unfourchanate [SIC] name...
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
On second thought, I suppose it's somewhat of a moot point, now.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
So, this woman is a total bitch who takes photos of their homes people list on Zillow and use them to make fun of the home owners because she personally finds large cookie cutter homes tasteless.
Kate Wagner is an architecture graduate student who teaches about good architecture partly by critiquing and parodying bad architecture. (And partly by publishing essays about the history of architecture and design.)
There needs to be a lot more of this in other fields of study. You can't learn about good stuff just by looking at the good stuff. Every programmer knows this: You learn so much about good programming by having to maintain shitty code.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
You are assuming Zillow doesn't have some manner of license from the MLS (usually one per state), and that part of that license is that they must protect the data/images because they are scraping 50 state listings, aggregating "free" stuff that can't otherwise be legally aggregated.
Learn to love Alaska
No, I reckon he's a McMansion owner and takes the (entirely justified) mockery of these architectural travesties a bit too personally. Probably has small hands, too ;-)
There is no such thing as bad publicity. This was free advertising for everyone.
Did your ugly, shoddily-built yet overpriced house show up on her site and now you're ass blasted about it? Aww, poow widdle baby.
There are quite a few more MLS providers out there than "one per state". A former employer of mine built and maintained websites for a number of real estate brokerages and I'm the one who managed integration with 3rd-party providers, like MLS.
I can assure you ZIllow does not have agreements with more than a handful of them; they scrape data from listing sites, they don't source data from listing services.
I also happen to know a couple of Zillow devs (who have no opinion on the matter discussed in this article, by the way), with whom I've had rather in-depth discussions about sourcing MLS data. In the end, we determined that their job, writing parsers for a bunch of public-facing sites, was easier than mine, as the public-facing sites were more likely to have their data organized in some sane manner and have fewer corner cases than the myriad MLS providers.
I'll add to that, most MLS providers are so protective of their data they won't even let you look at their feeds unless you're a licensed agent or brokerage, and Zillow is not. Thankfully, I had someone else handling the licensing aspect, but I always heard detailed reports of such issues (the guy's my best friend, we talk -- a lot). There's literally no way Zillow has access to enough MLS feeds to not be illegally scraping this data from public-facing sites.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Donations to the EFF are (U.S.) tax-deductible and, if you work for a big company, probably eligible for donation matching.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
What business is it of yours what other people do with their websites?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Too late Zillow. The Internet never forgets.
I'll add to that, most MLS providers are so protective of their data they won't even let you look at their feeds unless you're a licensed agent or brokerage, and Zillow is not.
Most MLS providers provide a public feed to MLS for exposure. Zillow likely pays for a license. Zillow makes money with ads and referrals. The "true" MLS data is still private. But there's little on that that isn't "public", but mostly formatting, as Zillow reprints almost everything. https://www.inman.com/2016/05/... indicates there's a single MLS for the entire country.
Learn to love Alaska
I worked with 5 in the Bay Area and NorCal alone; FAR, SFAR, BAREIS, RE Infolink, and CCAR Also, one for Northern Texas (NTREIS), and a slew of others that I can't recall of the top of my head as it's been a couple years. Of all of them, only CCAR, SFAR, and RE Infolink provide public MLS portals, but they don't provide all listings or details through those public portals. While there is a hell of a lot of overlap in areas covered by the Bay Area MLS services I listed, there is virtually no overlap in listings between them, because they guard their data like it's gold.
And, while there may be a single MLS for the entire country (there are a handful, actually), they don't list every MLS-listed property; they list only those listed with them by their member brokers, and it costs a pretty penny to be able to list on most MLS providers.
In which state(s) have you worked with MLS? Your experience seems somewhat limited.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
And, while there may be a single MLS for the entire country (there are a handful, actually), they don't list every MLS-listed property; they list only those listed with them by their member brokers, and it costs a pretty penny to be able to list on most MLS providers.
That's why the people want a Zillow/Trulia. To have a single spot to go to to find all the properties for sale in a specific area. The single national real estate organization can't even provide that list for their members, which is why they are being beat by two guys in a garage.
Learn to love Alaska
they are all theoretically connectable in the back, though they often choose not to be
Yes, that is part of protecting their data like it's gold. BAREIS, if I recall, was the worst of the lot that I dealt with in that regard. If a broker didn't pay their dues for a given month, they expected us to know this and disable their access before they told us. To add to that, every MLS provider presents their data differently; different field names, some have fields that others don't (not just different names, completely different data), different formats for the same data (some use acres for lot size, some use sq-ft, and most of them don't specify, you just get an integer or a float), different protocols for retrieving the data... trying to incorporate data from more than a handful of these guys is a serious mess.
And I'd have to imagine Zillow's numbers wouldn't be wrong 90% of the time (my personal experience) if they actually used the private MLS data. I remember, when I had access to that data, I used to look up some of the multi-million-dollar homes our realtors would list and see what Zillow had to say about them; often times Zillow would under-report the asking price. I've also heard their "zestimates" are off by anywhere from 10% to 50% -- low, of course -- and I've seen it with my own eyes at least once. It was on a ~~ $5.6M property (as appraised), listed by Zillow as worth $4.2M; They never saw an offer anywhere near the value of the property, with people citing the zestimate as the baseline for their offer, despite the appraisal on file with the city.
MLS services aren't being beaten by two guys in a garage, the two guys in a garage are charlatans who simply haven't been exposed yet. Just wait until a powerful politician tries to sell their house and gets bitten by a lowball zestimate, Zillow's days are numbered.
That said, I haven't heard the same stories about Trulia; but I doubt they buy MLS data, for the same primary reason I know Zillow doesn't: most MLS providers won't offer that data to anyone other than a licensed and practicing Realtor or brokerage.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
If trying to incorporate data from more than a handful of those guys is a serious mess, I'd actually expect the sorts of error rates Zillow has. It'd even explain why they can get the asking price wrong--that's something I'd not expect if they're scraping. And given the example you gave of the kind of greed seen in MLS providers? I'd not precisely be surprised if they sold limited access to, say, Zillow & charged the brokers extra for providing information to Zillow for them...
Please mod up insightful!
Though funny, it's the insight that makes it so, even if it's not necessarily correct...
A real estimate is both trivial and impossible. The neighborhood numbers are good, as they are real records from real listings/sales, and consistent across time, for properties compared. But yes, you'll never get a good estimate from data. That's why bids come with inspections and the like. The value is not knowable even for the agents in the area. It's all a guess based on comperables.
I know Zillow doesn't: most MLS providers won't offer that data to anyone other than a licensed and practicing Realtor or brokerage.
I just checked the MLS and Zillow for a house (more than one, but they were all the same result), and Zillow uses the same wording as the MLS. Either it came from the MLS, or the person that listed it with MLS, also listed it with Zillow. How would you explain that?
Learn to love Alaska
I just checked the MLS and Zillow for a house (more than one, but they were all the same result), and Zillow uses the same wording as the MLS. Either it came from the MLS, or the person that listed it with MLS, also listed it with Zillow...
... or Zillow scraped it from the site of a Realtor or brokerage who pays for the privilege of displaying the data publicly.
Which is what the Realtors and brokerages I worked with were doing. Paying, I mean.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Either it came from the MLS, or the person that listed it with MLS, also listed it with Zillow...
... or Zillow scraped it from the site of a Realtor or brokerage who pays for the privilege of displaying the data publicly.
So the realtor pays to list with secret MLS. Then the realtor pays to list it on a public MLS-like service. Then Zillow, without permission, scrapes the public site and sells it? Or the agent pays Zillow to list it?
Learn to love Alaska
You say you've worked with MLS providers, you should know how this works... But, then, you think there's only one MLS provider in Alaska, where you claim to have worked with the only provider in the state... Did you work with AKMLS, GFMLS, or SEAKMLS?
I've seen you claim to have a lot of experience in a varied array of fields (much as I do, so I'm not saying it's not possible), but I rarely see you exhibiting the knowledge required to take on an entry-level role in those fields, let alone the knowledge someone who actually spent any amount of time working in any of those fields should posses.
I'm sorry if that comes off a bit harsh, but that's my honest observation.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
AKMLS. I've never worked with Zillow. I'm trying to see where they get their data from. I've heard people here assert that they are scraping "public" sites, in contravention of the Terms of Use. While others are saying that Zillow has permission. Zillow indicates it uses "public records", and there are lots of entries in Zillow that are obviously court records (foreclosures and the like), as well as wording that matches MLS wording, but not the wording used on the agent's public listing (i.e., the wording matches the MLS, but not the Re/Max or Century 21 listing wording).
I'm asking how, and you are more focused on my credentials to ask that question.
Learn to love Alaska
I'm asking how, and you are more focused on my credentials to ask that question.
Have you stopped to consider that I am calling your credentials into question because you are displaying extreme ignorance of the subject matter? I already answered your question and your understanding of the topic is so poor that you completely missed that answer.
Because I'm a nice guy, I'll explain it the way I used to when I got paid to onboard Realtors for my previous employer:
Realtors and brokers pay for access to MLS data. This access not only grants them the ability to list their properties with that MLS provider and browse the data, but to also display that data on their own website.
Do you get it now? I'm guessing you still don't, so here are a few examples, just a handful that I've worked with personally:
Ginny Kavanaugh: Private Listings and MLS Portal
Brent and Mary Gullixson: Private Listings and MLS Portal
CAMPI: Private Listings and MLS Portal
Sereno Group: Private Listings and MLS Portal
Cowperthwaite: Private Listings and MLS Portal
Keller WIlliams: Private Listings and MLS Portal
You see all those links that say "MLS Portal"? Zillow would be scraping from links like those.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.