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Comment by Steeeve | Hacker News Reader

> McMansion Hell educates the public about architectural concepts, urban planning, environmentalism, and history.

That's simply not true. It's ludicrous.

At the EFF level, this is a complete waste of time. There are more than a few instances of fair use out there that are defensible and are worthy of protection efforts. McMansion Hell provides a fraction of the public value that Perez Hilton does - and like most people I consider his site a black mark in societies history.

I get that everybody deserves a level of protection, but everybody does not get it. Resources are thin. EFF should be focusing on more important pursuits.

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> EFF should be focusing on more important pursuits.

Your opinion of that website has absolutely no bearing on whether EFF should focus on defending them. This is a clear First Amendment case with digital rights square in the middle. Zillow is attempting to exert copyright claims against a blogger when Zillow owns zero copyright on the photos in question.

This case is exactly what EFF is all about, hell it's what their name means.

Don't let your own biases block out common sense.

This is not a first amendment case at all. Freedom of expression has nothing to do with the privilege to use images posted on a website.

The SCOTUS disagrees,

We have repeatedly rejected First Amendment challenges to injunctions from copyright infringement on the ground that First Amendment concerns are protected by and coextensive with the fair use doctrine.

This is not a copyright issue. Copyright was peripherally mentioned in the C&D and not the basis of the C&D. Copyright does not belong to Zillow, as they mentioned themselves directly in the C&D.

What's ludicrous is acting certain when you obviously don't have any experience with the site. I looked through that site for a few hours, at some point during the past year. It's very insightful and addresses one of the most difficult aspects of design thinking, namely when to use conventional forms and when to violate them.

Provide a link to the post that you feel most exemplifies the site's educational value containing information about architectural concepts, urban planning, environmentalism, or history.

I guess you can't be bothered to look for yourself, so here is a recent post about architecture concepts.

http://mcmansionhell.com/post/161514422581/mmh-does-architec...

There are many such posts (explicitly theoretical/academic) in the site's history. More importantly, the day to day "McMansion" posts actually back up the theoretical concepts expressed in such posts. Much the way we programmers use both positive and negative examples of Design Patterns.

If you are not aware -- and it seems like you aren't -- the Design Patterns movement in software was inspired by an architecture book that did much the same thing -- showing patterns and anti-patterns -- just with less hipsterism, and more examples than counterexamples.

That post provides no educational value whatsoever.

Lol I don't believe it's worth my time to argue this further, since you haven't made any actual arguments, and you come off as kind of a jerk with all the unsupported claims, not responding to my points, and demanding that I do work for you. Sorry you are blind to this. If you want to understand your deficiencies in this area I'd recommend reading A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander, followed by Design Patterns by the 'Gang of Four', then thinking about the connection between architectural pattern languages and cutting edge software design. Perhaps think about why programmers have taken the time to assemble libraries of anti-pattern examples specifically, analogous to McMansion Hell's.

> Resources are thin. EFF should be focusing on more important pursuits.

I doubt the EFF spent more than a day or two of a lawyer's time on this case, and they got some good publicity out of it too. It's not like they splashed out millions of dollars.

People all around the country receive similar C&D letters every day. Many of them actually are clear cut cases of fair use. All I'm saying is that they could have picked any of those cases to spend their time on.

The EFF does not have unlimited resources to defend every single C&D case across the country. They pick and choose their cases to have the maximum impact and provide the best precedent for future cases. And they act according to the mandate of their supporters, with which they seem to be in very good alignment in this instance.

If you really believe the EFF's time and resources would be better spent on some of these mysterious other cases you reference, and assuming you are a supporter, then write them a letter stating your arguments. I'm sure they will reply. Hell, write an open letter. I'm sure one way or the other you'll either open their eyes to the merit of your cause, or more likely, learn exactly why they can't devote resources to its pursuit.

Either way, you'll be doing a hell of a lot more than simply complaining here, which is useless.

Which is it? They didn't spend much time or they don't have unlimited resources?

> mysterious other cases you reference

Are you actually disputing that this doesn't happen every day? Google receives 2M takedown notices each day - and that's a stat from 2008. Those are directly related to copyright disputes, not peripherally referencing them like this case.

1. Both

2. Not sure what you're trying to say. The EFF is not a free lawyer service. It exists to defend and enhance civil liberties and freedom of speech and is thus very picky about the cases it takes, and rightly so. For more information see https://www.eff.org/pages/legal-assistance

Quoting google DMCA stats is totally irrelevant. What's your point?

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