Zillow's second letter about McMansion Hell is still wrong

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."

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.

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.

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.

How is an individual with limited resources (money and time) supposed to ever hold their ground against $BIG_CORP?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.