Web Directory Of Attorneys Upsets D.C. Bar
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
We don't need you between us and our information anymore. Thanks for all the fish.
Sincerely, The World
Don't be surprised when you get sued for using someone else's data without their permission to jump start your startup.
Sincerely,
Content Creators
The Client Protection Fund of the Bar of Maryland, the state's legal licensing body, provides Avvo with information for 34,000 lawyers, including the name, address and date of admittance to practice in the state. Avvo pays a standard fee for the agency to produce the list. So far, none of Maryland's members have complained, according to the bar's administrator.
A shiny virtual nickel to someone who shows me how to quote text on this website.
Edit: it's unclear how the directory of DC Bar (as opposed to Maryland bar) was obtained and what specific claim the DC Bar is alleging.
As a general rule within the USA there's no copyright in raw facts (themselves), though there is in any presentation of said facts.
Thus if AVVO got a printed copy of the DC Bar's printed members' directory and then hired some people to type it up, they'd be fine.
Where they might not be fine is if the DC Bar had some kind of terms-of-use on their site that says "you can't use this site except for personal use" and then the DC Bar could show that Avvo obtained the information via the website.
The first point seems to be true: http://www.dcbar.org/copyright.cfm
(for background: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.dcbar.org/copyright.... )
The second point -- whether or not the Avvo obtained their listings via the site or not -- is clearly a point of contention.
Given the previous willingness to legally obtain the listing (even paying actual money) I'd be surprised if the Avvo founders haven't dotted their i's and crossed their t's on this one.
Paragraph 4 from the article:
"This has nothing to do with obstructing access to information," said the bar's spokeswoman, Cynthia Kuhn. "It has to do with a commercial company taking this information without authorization and in some cases perpetuating misinformation" by not updating the data frequently enough."
Now, whether or not they have a case remains to be seen. Their willingness to pay for some of their data bodes well for Avvo, agreed. But the original commenter was painting this story as if it was about an organization trying to limit public information a la realtors with housing info.
That may be the case. But my comment was meant to point out that the other side is arguing that this is a case about theft and misuse of proprietary data.
The underlying data: not proprietary (do you really think membership in the DC Bar, of all things, is "proprietary"?).
The presentation of said data on the DC Bar website: presentation is proprietary, data is still not.
But additionally: DC Bar says "if you get this information via this venue, then you're accepting our terms of use which say you can't use the information obtained via this venue to, eg, compile an AVVO-like site."
So on the face of it: only if Avvo is crazy-stupid will Avvo get burned here: the only scenarios in which Avvo gets burned are somewhere between
(a) the DC Bar can show suspicious access patterns that either come from Avvo or come at suspicious times vis-a-vis Avvo's updates
(b) Avvo doesn't have any internal documentation demonstrating from whence they obtained the information that's ticking off the DC Bar (ie: we paid some dudes to re-type the relevant phonebook sections, or paid some dudes to re-type the printed member's directory, etc.)
So the whole thing is pretty silly (at least until more facts emerge).
Edit: Because without some mix of (a) and (b), the DC Bar is ultimately going to have to claim something like "there's no possible way they could have gotten that information besides misusing our site", which I doubt would play well.
As for whether or not that argument would play well, I don't know, I'm not a lawyer. I merely want to point out that the DC bar is trying to make this into a "they're stealing our data" case while the Avvo guys are trying to make this into a "they're just being lame" case.
Here's from a few weeks back:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/17/dc-bar-fight...
It's worth reading for details.
Bystander verdict:
- there's almost no conceivable way the data in question is proprietary (beneficiary: avvo)
- it's established avvo got their info by scraping the dc bar's website (beneficiary: dc bar)
- after seeing that avvo was scraping them, a terms of service got put up prohibiting said scraping, but avvo didn't quit scraping until receiving a cease-and-desist (beneficiary: dc bar)
But summary-for-the-lazy is almost unchanged:
- underlying data not proprietary (essentially: public records)
- avvo obtained public records from a source that didn't want avvo using them the way avvo did (point of fact now)
Even the quotes from the DC Bar support this:
taking this information without authorization
If it was "their" information 'this' would -> 'our' for more impact; prepared quotes tend to be vetted.
No predictions how this turns out.
In this case, it's the other way around -- the DC lawyers must register with (and pay) the bar association in order to be allowed to practice in the district. The registration and disciplinary information is public data, but the bar association is usually the only organization that actually holds the data (since they were the ones who collected it in the first place). So, in many cases, including this one, the only way to get this public information is by going through the bar.
We went through something similar about a year ago in New Jersey. The AP article has fallen into the archives, but the Seattle PI wrote a blog post about it: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/venture/archives/135524.a...
Question: Why did Avvo scrape the DC bar's web site after the TOS was changed to prohibit them from doing it?
I do know that if the DC bar provided this public data to people and companies directly, like most of the other other state bars have, this wouldn't be an issue. Unfortunately, the only provider of the data is the bar's own website, so retrieving the data directly from the site is the only real option. Terms of use may or may not change whether that's ok, but we'll have to wait and see what happens.
another paragraph
code here -> (((lisp (((((sucks))))) )))
* no italics
"Avvo.com, the site posting the profiles, says it's simply using public data to help consumers find lawyers and their track records.
"There's no reason why lawyer-licensing records should be treated any differently than records for any other profession," said Joshua King, general counsel for the Seattle start-up. "The bar doesn't like the fact that the information is out of its control." "
Sounds to me that they're more upset about potentially being mis-rated, rather than the information itself. If the rates gave them more clients across the board instead of the negative reviews, I doubt they'd be complaining.
I think it's one of those things that sounds great theoretically but isn't so great when it happens to you. Not saying that I am going to sue, but I find it in pretty poor form.
While I've never visited Avvo's site, according to the article, there are other pieces of information there. What about the history of which cases a lawyer has won or lost? Is that public info? What about ratings and comments generated by past clients on a public website? It seemed to me the bar was miffed about that too, even though I've venture to say that's for all intents and purposes, public.
Other than your name, and perhaps where you attended law school, I'd agree that personal info shouldn't be on there. But I don't think use of public info is unfair.
I'm not sure the public rating of lawyers in the form they implemented to be the best way or even a good way of finding and evaluating lawyers. But I don't think it's bad to try or use public information to do so.
The only reason I can see a directory being disadvantageous is because it undermines all the money-spent-on-education/ years-spent-ass-kissing to get into "the network" of good-old Washingtonites and the referrals they bring.